


trapped and drowning and I swear to God I'm trying

by aceofjapan



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Anxious Katsuki Yuuri, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Depressed Katsuki Yuuri, Depressed Victor Nikiforov, Depression, Detroit, Dissociation, Don't copy to another site, Florence + the Machine References, Grand Prix Final, Grand Prix Final Banquet, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Katsuki Yuuri-centric, M/M, Supportive Phichit Chulanont, and therefore so is yuuri, because the author is a florence fanboy, detroit skating fam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-01-06 19:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 40,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18395021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofjapan/pseuds/aceofjapan
Summary: At some point, Yuuri becomes distantly aware that he is spiralling.Not for a while, though: for a while, everything feels too raw to even think about.It's not that he thinks he's doing okay, it's rather that he's not thinking at all, he closes himself firmly out of his own head.He knows this is something he has to do, knows it deep in his bones and the soles of his feet without having to take the detour of thinking about it. He needs to do this, needs to take himself out of the equation for a while, or else he's going to break.--In Sochi, Yuuri shatters into pieces, all jagged edges and sharp splinters, and he doesn't know if he can put himself back together again.





	1. metal on our tongues and silver in our lungs

**Author's Note:**

> This story will closely follow Yuuri in his darkest days - the months between the GPF in Sochi and his return to Hasetsu.  
> It's not a happy story, dealing with depression and including heavy angst, so please heed the tags above.  
> Please proceed with caution of the themes mentioned are difficult for you to deal with. Take care of yourselves and reach out to someone if you need help.
> 
> The respective chapters will include more detailed content warnings in the end notes. 
> 
> Updates every Sunday 🖤  
> Lots of thanks to my wonderful betas, [Sam](http://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/clarinda))! For this chapter I also had some advice from [Baph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baph/). 
> 
>    
> The title of this story stems from [this wonderful poem](http://theliteraryluggage.tumblr.com/post/101552703027/) about depression.  
>  _"Sometimes depression means_  
>  _Not being able to write for weeks_  
>  _Because the only words you have to offer the world_  
>  _Are trapped and drowning and I swear to God I'm trying."_ \- "Alexandra" Tilton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see end notes for chapter cw.

It‘s just too much. Too much.

  


It‘s the straw that breaks his back, it‘s the desperately heavy, the agonising feather that makes him buckle down under all the weight on his shoulders.

If he‘d asked himself two minutes ago if he would ever make it through this blackened nightmare of a weekend—if he would come out, gasping, but still alive, on the other side—he probably would have hesitated a moment too long, being ashamed even before himself to give the answer he knows in his bones to be true.

  


But now...  
Now, all of a sudden, he believes he could have made it through, devastated, yes, raw and burning in pain and shame, but not broken, not torn apart. If it weren‘t for that last leaden feather, that sends the whole balance of his world off-kilter once and for all.

“A commemorative photo?“

Three words bring the waves of emptiness crashing down around him, and Yuuri knows he needs to leave, right now, needs to leave these walls behind that have plucked him apart these last few days, limb by fragile limb. He needs to get out, he needs to be alone, more than anything he needs to get out from under that unknowing gaze of Victor Nikiforov, so harsh in its ignorance of him, of his pain, of everything. He needs to be somewhere where he can let himself fall apart, far away from prying eyes, far away from pity and disappointment.

A long, stuttering heartbeat. He turns, and walks away.

  


The noises around him grow distant on his way to the hotel. By the time they are in front of his room, Celestino’s voice sounds very far away, and Yuuri is not sure if he could react to them, even if he was able to make out the syllables that have long since drifted into each other to form a formless mess of sounds. He nods vaguely, hoping that will be enough for Celestino to let him go, leave him to his woundedness like an animal that he distantly thinks he doesn’t deserve like feeling.

  


As the door of his hotel room closes behind him, he leaves behind his luggage and his shoes. He barely makes it two steps into the room before he finds himself collapsed, hunched over on the rough, colourless carpet, contours swimming around him.

The emptiness tears at his chest and he desperately wants to expel it with a scream, raw and rough, sitting at the bottom of his throat. But instead it overflows from his eyes, drops in quiet thunder on his glasses and the carpet, rolls lazily off the fabric of his track pants. Instead, it falls from his lips in small, choked sobs, dry and shaky, like static on a dead phone line. 

He feels the hurt sitting in his throat and the more desperately he tries to keep his sounds muffled, one hand clamped firmly over his lips, terrified of being overheard again, terrified of having his weakness thrown back in his face once more, the louder the echoes seem to reverberate in his ears, thrown back at him from the narrow confines of his hotel room.

His fingertips dig into his skin so hard he fears his cheeks might bruise, but he cannot bring himself to care, cannot bring himself to loosen his cramped muscles. Anything, anything to drag his attention away from the searing pain that tears at him.

“Vi—....cchan...“

The syllables escape him heavily, ragged as his breathing, muffled behind his fingers.

And then: “why“, and after two shallow, painful breaths again, “why... why“.

He doesn’t even know which question he attaches to the word.  
Why did you have to die? Why wasn’t I there to say goodbye? Why did I let you down? Why did I let myself down? And—most heavily of all, drenched in guilt that contorts his stomach—why couldn’t it have been any other day?

But really it doesn’t matter, because he isn’t asking, not really, just clinging to this one hollow syllable to pour all his desperation into, again, and again, and again, as he presses it forth from his lips. It’s a crutch, something to focus on, as if it might stop him from drowning—he knows he‘s grasping at straws.

But he keeps on sobbing, fingers still clutching around his mouth, every breath burning in his lungs. 

Everything around him feels too sharp, the world in a thrumming focus. He feels the texture of the carpet rough under his knees, hears the deafening rustle of his clothes with every movement, he smells the generic cleanliness of hotel rooms, his own sweat clinging to his clothes, the harsh, clinical odour of ice rink bathroom soap on his hand. 

It‘s all too much, too strong, too bitter, doubling him over with nausea, but he can‘t stop thinking about it—every sensory impression digs its way into his consciousness, tries to claw its way to the surface, to the forefront of his thoughts, until there‘s no room left for anything else, until the sensory overload drowns out all other emotions, until his stomach clenches painfully under the pressure and the hand clasped around his mouth is no longer holding back only his sobs but also burning bile trying to force its way out of his body. 

  


He stumbles to his feet as if in slow motion, his limbs numb and sluggish from being still for too long, and crashes into the bathroom, letting the bile fall from his lips into the pristine white of the toilet bowl. It burns in his nose and his eyes are watering even more, but as he drops back down onto the cool tile of the bathroom floor, it finally overcomes him—not calm, not exactly. More of a distance from himself, a detachment, like he‘s vomited his self out with the remains of the protein bar Celestino had forced on him earlier. 

He still feels the sticky streaks of tears on his cheeks, the cold hard tile underneath him, but it seems far away, dulled, fuzzy. He feels pleasantly empty, body and mind, as he watches himself fall apart, detached from the reality of his aching muscles, his burning lungs, the tearing in his chest. He gives in to the emptiness, because it's so much easier than fighting his way back into his self.

His self is the furthest thing from where he wants to be right now.

  


* * *

  


With a sharp knock on the door he is forced back into his mind, startled, suddenly cold on the bathroom floor, shivering. How long has he been sitting here, wedged in between the toilet and the bathtub? 

He hears Celestino‘s voice calling for him outside the door. Yuuri doesn‘t know what it is he wants, doesn‘t have a sense of the time nor any memory of what his coach told him earlier, before he left him to his own devices. He just knows that he’s not leaving this room tonight. 

He holds his breath and hopes that whatever it is—an invitation for dinner, a stern conversation about his failure or just Celestino checking on him—is not so important that it can‘t wait. If he stays silent long enough, will Celestino assume that he‘s gone to sleep, or gone out on his own? 

It seems like it, because at some point the knocking stops and Celestino‘s voice fades away.

  


Yuuri breathes out sharply, pushes the hair out of his eyes with fingers numb from cold.

The room is filled with the sharp smell of his sick still covering the toilet bowl, that he didn‘t have the presence of mind to flush. He reaches out and flushes it now. The hiss of the water swirling on ceramic falls on his ear neither distant nor oppressively loud, which is how he knows he‘s found the way back to himself for now, even though he still feels like a stranger in his own body. His limbs are heavy and cumbersome and at the same time seem to weigh nothing at all as he clumsily gets to his feet. He rinses his mouth with water straight from the tap, then drinks a few sips, distinctly feeling the cold slithering down to his stomach.

  


He makes his way back to the bedroom on unsteady feet. 

In the darkening room he sees his phone on the floor by the door, where he dropped it, lighting up with Celestino‘s name, and he feels distantly relieved that he‘s set it to silent hours earlier, in uneasy anticipation of encouraging and commiserating messages and calls. He regards it from a distance, still standing in the doorway between bathroom and bedroom, but the few steps between him and the phone are a mountain, and he knows it‘s better; he can already see himself scrolling obsessively through all accounts of his failure if he goes anywhere near it, so he doesn‘t.

Instead, he takes a step forward, and another, until his shins knock against the frame of his bed, his fingers tugging at the zipper of his track jacket. He slips it off his shoulders and drops it where he stands, along with his pants, though he‘s still shivering, but the way they rustle with every one of his movements feels like sandpaper behind his eyeballs.

He drops forward and crawls underneath the thick comforter that settles comfortingly heavy on his body. Dark blue exhaustion crawls toward him from the edge of his awareness and he lets himself be swallowed whole, anxious maelstrom of thoughts, shivering limbs, desperately grasping fingernails and all.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes descriptions of an anxiety attack, dissociation and vomiting.
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter title from [Spectrum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC-_lVzdiFE) by Florence + the Machine 
> 
> _When we first came here_  
>  _We were cold and we were clear_  
>  _With no colours on our skin_  
>  _We were light and paper thin_
> 
> _And when we come back we'll be dressed in black_  
>  _And you'll scream our names aloud_  
>  _And we won't eat and we won't sleep_  
>  _We'll drag bodies from the ground_


	2. you'll always be my favourite ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends, welcome back and thanks to everyone who read chapter 1! 🖤  
> Today's chapter features everyone's favourite sweet peach! 🍑  
> Once again all the love for my wonderful betas, [Sam](http://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/), [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/) and [Baph.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baph/)
> 
>  
> 
> **See end notes for chapter CW.** (though there's nothing major this time)

  
  


The night swallows him whole and spits him up in bits and pieces.

Every distant noise in the hotel hallways and outside on the streets tears off another piece of him, flings it out into the night to lose itself among the flurry of traffic and minds and winking lights.

He never quite breaks through, but it‘s like he‘s floating just beneath the surface of wakefulness all night, every noise and every movement a wave that crashes over him, threatening to make him splutter and heave.

His dreams are filled with bruising falls and dizzying, spinning movements.  
His dreams are filled with questioning voices on all sides of him, demanding answers that he doesn't have.  
His dreams are filled with impossibly heavy legs, like he‘s been dipped in liquid lead, searing and blistering, dripping down, fusing him to the ground. He desperately wants to run away.

His body is shivering and sweating, tangled up in sheets too tight and heavy. His back and his hips and his thighs ache with every movement, unable to get comfortable, unable to relax. His feet scream in burning pain where they brush against the sheets.

He is in limbo, suspended in a state of unending discomfort (and isn‘t that just like the entirety of his life?), and one of the few clear thoughts that crystallise in his mind is that he just wants to be awake already, wants this night to be over with. But he never gets close enough to wakefulness to drag himself forcefully out of sleep, too heavy is the exhaustion that clings to his body.

So he spends a night, a fortnight, in limbo, and he wakes up with the first light of morning streaming into the room where he hasn't thought to draw the curtains the night before, and he feels impossibly more tired than before.

He does not move.

Eyes irrevocably flipped open like a broken seal, he stares at the scrunched up pillow wedged between him and the headboard, dread already building at the back of his throat.

Yuuri tries to wade through the sludge of his mind in search of the plan for the day.  
There‘s the gala this afternoon, the banquet after, he knows that much, but what until then? Does he have any press meetings? Is Celestino coming to collect him for breakfast? Does he have anywhere to be?

He doesn‘t want to find out. He doesn‘t want to think about it. 

He wants to go back to sleep but not the way he‘s slept at night.  
He wants a deep, dreamless, a mindless sleep. 

He wants to sleep an actual fortnight.  
He wants to sleep and just... not... wake up.

The morning light has visibly shifted by the time he finally moves; it is still greyish and dull, a stark, sunless light, devoid of any warmth, but it has crept closer to his bed, is reaching in slow tendrils over his comforter.

Yuuri shoves them away forcefully, both comforter and light, and drags himself onto his feet.

It‘s like a weight settles on his shoulders, as soon as he‘s upright, trying to pull him down again.

His phone is still lying halfway through the room on the grey flecked carpet, silent but demanding attention.

He refuses.

Shower first.

He hasn‘t showered the night before, not after his disastrous free skate, and he is still tacky and disgusting with sweat and tears, misery wafting off every pore of him.

He strips in the bathroom and carefully avoids looking at his face in the mirror, into his own eyes, but for a long time he gazes at the bruises blooming across his hips and knees, the scrapes on his palms. 

He traces the landscapes of pastel blue and pale lilac and rose pink and bronze green, a bouquet painted on his skin, the only flowers he has deserved this weekend, and finds himself thinking that it‘s not enough.

He pokes and prods, paying careful attention to the pain that spreads underneath his fingertips, and finds himself thinking that it‘s not enough.

He increases his pressure, twists and grabs at the too soft skin, picks at the barely formed scabs on his scraped palms, adding new shades of coral red and carmine to the pale canvas, and finds himself thinking that it‘s not enough.

The shower spray is too cold and lacking in pressure, lacklustre and disappointing, and he finds himself thoroughly unsurprised.

 

Once Yuuri is out of the shower and dressed in the least overwhelming clothes he can find (jeans, a t-shirt, a sweater, all in black), he no longer has an excuse.

He stares down his phone, quite literally, as he towers over the intimidating black rectangle and he seriously considers letting it win.

But he can‘t have been staring at it for much longer than thirty seconds when the screen lights up with a new notification, displaying with it the frankly nauseating amount of older notifications, and his hand twitches.

Now that he‘s seen, he cannot—cannot leave them. All those little red bubbles with the little white numbers in them need to disappear, it‘s a visceral need itching in his fingertips and under his scalp, he cannot—he cannot leave them. 

He won‘t check them, he vows silently as he bends down, he‘ll just clear them and be done with it.

His fingers close around the cool, smooth glass.  
He checks every last notification, and does not reply to a single one.

Then, perching at the edge of the bed, he stares down at the cumulative evidence of having ignored Phichit for the last sixteen hours and tries to calculate how long it will be before he goes from regular-worried to seriously-worried and sends Celestino to check on him.

If this were any other competition he’d have at least another eight hours before Phichit considers him MIA and goes all mother hen on him, but he‘s combusted so spectacularly yesterday, he may just have kicked Phichit‘s mother hen instinct into overdrive.

He spends at least ten minutes idly contemplating if the risk of losing his undisturbed morning to Celestino‘s second-hand fretting really outweighs the effort of having to compose a message to Phichit that contains some semblance of reassurance. Two more messages roll in during those ten minutes and Yuuri is thankful, not for the first time, that he has his read receipts turned off.

 

**Phichit** 🍑  
.  
.  
.

21:17 just call me anytime you want ok?  
21:17 don‘t worry about the time  
21:17 i‘ll be here

21:49 I get if you don‘t wanna talk right now but please take care of yourself  
21:50 take a long shower, watch a movie  
21:50 a nice one, nothing sad!!!  
21:51 just don‘t shut yourself up ok?  
21:51 it‘s ok if you wanna be alone but you know  
21:51 don‘t... do the thing where you shut everyone out

22:47 [img.jpg]  
22:47 arthur still loves you  
22:47 and so do i btw

23:15 ill let you sleep just... let me know you‘re ok when you read this  
23:17 or do you want me to call?  
23:18 I‘ll call and then you don‘t have to do anything but pick up if you want

23:24 alright i‘ll let you sleep

23:36 ok just remember i know today seriously sucked and lbr it‘s gonna keep sucking for a while and I know you‘re in pain and it‘s gonna be hard to see right now but there‘s a life and a world beyond the suck, and you‘re gonna get there again. Just remember that what happened to Vicchan was not your fault and what happened after that was not your fault and even if you‘re probably hella disappointed right now, and understandably so, know that we are Not. Disappointed. In you. We all love you and we are disappointed WITH you because what happened to you today was sucky, but we are not and will never be disappointed IN you.  
23:37 try to sleep and call me or text me  
23:37 whenever

04:12 is it to early for gallows humor  
04:12 becuase the forums have come up with some hilarious memes  
04:13 and also som hella out there conspiracy theories like wow  
04:13 sorry that‘s probably not helpful  
04:13 i may have had a few drinks shhhhh

07:38 i‘m going to bed but i‘m leaving my phone on  
07:38 call me when you wake up

 

The messages blur as water drips on the phone screen and Yuuri can‘t believe he‘s crying again. He keeps getting overwhelmed by it—the sheer amount of love and care that Phichit chooses to sink into this black hole that is Yuuri‘s soul, over and over again—he doesn‘t understand it.

He doesn‘t understand why Phichit bothers, why he keeps taking time out of his day and his night and his sleep to try and hold up Yuuri‘s rickety semblance of a self. He doesn‘t doubt it—he could never doubt that Phichit loves and cares about him with a fierce abandon—he just doesn‘t understand.

It‘s so, so easy to love and care about Phichit in return, he is a beacon of goodness and light in the world that deserves to only have the best things happening to him, but Yuuri—he knows this, he knows it for a fact—Yuuri is so hard to love. Yuuri is not one of the things that Phichit deserves to have happen to him.

He cannot handle a call right now, but with hesitant fingers he types out a message, then a different one, and another, deletes them all.

It is so hard to lie convincingly in text. A short message will carry too much weight in every syllable. A long one will force him to be too honest, or else repeat himself, which will only fuel suspicion. 

He settles on something that is truthful by sheer lack of information.

  
07:52 I‘m up now, going out. Go to sleep, I‘ll call you in the morning.

It doesn‘t actually say anything at all about his mental state, but it lets Phichit know that he‘s alive and conscious, and hopefully that‘ll be enough to tide him over for a few hours.

It doesn‘t take more than a few seconds before Phichit‘s replies start rolling in, but Yuuri locks and pockets his phone, along with his wallet and key card, because he wasn‘t lying. He is going out.

There‘s a pit in his stomach that demands his attention and he doesn‘t have the energy to resist. He doesn‘t think he could face the hotel dining hall right now, but he remembers seeing a bakery down the street. Something rich and buttery should do nicely.

  


* * *

  


Yuuri‘s mind is buzzing by the time he returns to his room after the gala.

Really his mind has been buzzing all afternoon, foggy with the white noise that makes everything feel far away. But it‘s never been as noticeable as in the sudden quiet of his hotel room, after the constant noise of the afternoon. The music, the voices, the smells in the stadium, all the people. The skating.

He‘s watched all the exhibition skates diligently, just as Celestino wanted him to, as he sat at Yuuri‘s side, prattling all the while, pointing out strengths and weaknesses of the skaters, chattering about program components, idly collecting inspiration for future routines.

Yuuri is not sure if Celestino actually believes Yuuri will still need new routines next season, or if he‘s just trying to make him feel better, distract him, get his mind off all of that raw disaster.

Yuuri barely listened, just as he barely watched, barely took in the movements on the ice. It‘s all halfway faded into a kind of half-remembered dream already, even though the gala has ended barely forty minutes ago. He‘s sure by next week he wouldn’t be able to tell you about any of the skates he‘s seen today, couldn‘t name a single song that they skated to.

Except for Victor‘s, he reminds himself with a self-loathing kind of mockery. But even that has nothing to do with what he‘s seen today. If he hadn‘t watched that particular skate all throughout the season so far, after every one of Victor‘s gold medals, he‘s not sure it‘d be any different. 

He remembers Victor taking the ice under a roaring cheer, sounding muffled in Yuuri‘s ears.  
He remembers tracking Victor‘s movements on the ice with a robotic kind of attention.  
He remembers not feeling a single thing.

Has he ever failed to feel anything watching Victor skate?  
Hell, has he ever felt less than _everything_ watching Victor skate?

Is this going to be it?  
After spending more than a decade of his life working up to this moment, and failing... has he ruined the one thing that never failed to make him feel something?

He stares at his suit hanging on his closet door like one would stare at the gallows, at the bottom of a lake rushing closer, at a tsunami hurtling toward you, 1,700 pounds per cubic yard of pure, unyielding steel.

He can already feel the weight of that fabric on him, like a full suit of armour without any of the protection.

He‘s tried to get out of the banquet, but Celestino wouldn‘t have any of his excuses.  
Yuuri is pretty sure all his reasons about networking and responsibility and good sportsmanship are bullshit. He‘s pretty sure Phichit has called Celestino and told him not to let him be alone that night. There‘s a part of him that hates him for it.

Victor is going to be at the banquet. Plisetsky is going to be there.  
Every single person in that room will be aware of just how spectacularly he‘s fallen apart this weekend. And yet no one, no one will _know_ , no one will understand.

He will be unable to explain, unable to make them _see_ , make them feel.

He doesn‘t want to make excuses. There are no excuses.  
Yet he wonders at how he can feel simultaneously such intense self-loathing and fierce defensiveness.

With a desperate abandon he wishes they could _see_ , could see the deep, bloody gashes torn into his heart, the eight-and-a-half-pound hole that has been scooped into his chest, leaving a tearing, screaming emptiness in its wake.

He wants to be able to rip open his shirt and make them see how a part of him is missing, how his ribcage is hollow, his lungs torn out through his diaphragm, his heart squeezed into a pulp, trickling down his spine, his legs, seeping out through his feet.

He wants them to _see_ , wants to scream at them to _try and do better than me if you were in my place._

But he doesn‘t want to make excuses. There are no excuses.

He holds both beliefs in his mind as he stares at this suit. _I am large_ , he thinks, _I contain multitudes_.

Fifteen minutes later he stares at himself in the mirror, suit sitting on his frame, all wrong, wrinkling and stretching in all the wrong places.

_I am large_ , he thinks, _I contain blinis._

There are no holes in his chest.

When Celestino picks him up, Yuuri doesn‘t scream, and he doesn‘t make excuses.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: some dissociation; minor self-harm, if you squint?  
>  
> 
> _"I am large, I contain multitudes."_ is a quote from Walt Whitman's [Song of Myself (section 51)](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version).
> 
> Chapter title from [Big God](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kIrRooQwuk) by Florence + the Machine  
>  _"You keep me up at night_  
>  _To my messages you do not reply_  
>  _You know I still like you the most_  
>  _The best of the best and the worst of the worst_  
>   
>  _Well, you can never know_  
>  _The places that I go_  
>  _I still like you the most_  
>  _You'll always be my favourite ghost."_
> 
> **Next Up:** The Banquet! Victor! Lots of dancing!


	3. another drink just to pass the time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drinking! Dancing! And Victor! 
> 
>  
> 
> Also all my love for Drunk Yuuri, whose English becomes progressively more American and colloquial, in my mind.
> 
> Once again all the love for my wonderful betas, [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/)!
> 
> No CW for this chapter! Yay!

  
  


Victor has been smiling.

He can’t make himself think it in any other tense.  
It’s got to be present perfect continuous, because at one point in his life he started smiling, and he hasn’t stopped since.  
That’s how it feels anyway.

The smile has been etched into his features, chiselled into stone for the last hour, the last day, the last year. It has to be present, perfect, continuous.

He has been smiling, and he doesn’t know how to stop.

He’s smiling at a sponsor, now.  
Not that it matters.  
He was smiling at an ice dancer ten minutes ago and he was smiling at an ISU official an hour ago, he was smiling at the press this afternoon, and he was smiling at fans last night.  
It’s all the same.

It doesn’t even bear mentioning, because the smile is part of his being now, part of his essence, he might as well be saying: He’s breathing at a sponsor. He‘s existing at a sponsor. He’s being comprised of atoms gently vibrating in empty space. At a sponsor.

So he‘s been smiling, and lets their words wash over him, their praise and their congratulations along with their demands and their thinly veiled suggestive comments.

He feels slightly sick to his stomach, but still he lifts his champagne glass ever so slightly, inclines his head ever so slightly, and he smiles. What else is he going to do?

There is nothing else.

 

  


* * *

  


_I don‘t want to be here_ is the first thought in Yuuri‘s mind as he enters the banquet hall.

The second and third thought come in quick succession.

They are: _I want to die._ and _No, you don‘t._ because Yuuri has been trying to let go of thinking extreme things such as these at every inconvenience. He‘s voiced it out loud one too many times in Phichit‘s presence, and though he‘s never meant it, not truly, Phichit‘s been worrying.

So—this is more than an inconvenience, but with deference to an absent Phichit, Yuuri reminds himself that he does not actually want to die.

 _But I really don‘t want to be here_ is the fourth thought, mirroring the first.

Thought five through twelve are dedicated to Victor, whom he spots at that moment as Celestino leads him further into the banquet room. They are mainly comprised of panic—first the regular kind, and then the gay kind—leading to thought number thirteen crystallising clearly at the forefront of his mind.

_I need a drink._

He gives into that one because it‘s easy: there‘s champagne everywhere.

Soon, there‘s cool, smooth glass underneath his fingers, and as he downs the first glass in one greedy gulp, Celestino laughs and sends him off with a pat on his back and an invitation to _enjoy yourself!_

Yuuri is not enjoying anything about himself very much, nor does he enjoy champagne, really—it makes for the worst hangovers—but the bubbles tickling in his throat and warming his stomach slowly chase away thoughts fourteen through thirty-seven, until there‘s only a single one left in his mind.

One that he clings to with iron fingers, so desperate that he worries he may burst the delicate champagne flutes.

_Fuck it._

_Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it._

He doesn‘t want to be here. So he isn‘t going to be. Not in any way that matters. He‘ll give his mind a reprieve, let it fuck off to wherever it damn well pleases, just for a few hours.

His body can look after itself.

Three glasses of champagne in, that sounds like the best idea he‘s had all weekend, so he finds himself already reaching for glass number four.

 

  


* * *

  


There may be something else.

Victor isn‘t sure how he got here, in the arms of a stranger, laughing.

He doesn‘t remember the last time he‘s done either.

He‘s been smiling forever, but when‘s the last time he‘s laughed?  
When‘s the last time he’s let anyone close enough to hold him like this?

It‘s taken Katsuki Yuuri all of two words to break through Victor‘s careful defences.

_Fuck it._

That‘s all he‘d said, locking eyes with Victor after obliterating Yura in an impromptu dance off, the reasons for which Victor has yet to understand.

 _Fuck it_ , and then he‘d grabbed Victor‘s hand and tugged him onto the dance floor and Victor could feel the momentum of those two words, could feel the ferocity with which they rejected everything that had happened in the last 48 hours of Katsuki Yuuri‘s life.

Two words, two syllables, that rejected every fall, every sharp comment from the press and the audience, every time Victor had glimpsed him throughout the competition, shoulders hunched, features drawn, eyes unseeing.

 _Fuck it_ , he‘d said, like a man jumping out of a moving car hurtling toward a precipice. Like he knew making the jump would leave him scraped and bruised, fate uncertain, but not making it would leave him dead.

 _Fuck it_ , he‘d said, like dancing with Victor was his last chance to not end up in a flaming wreck at the bottom of a gaping abyss.

And Victor found himself looking at that reckless abandon, at that relinquished control that he himself hasn‘t let himself lose his grasp on in years, and thought: _Yes. Fuck it._ and gave himself over to Yuuri‘s lead.

 

So now he’s laughing in a stranger’s arms and it feels—it feels amazing.

It‘s so easy, letting himself be led by Yuuri, mindless, weightless.  
Yuuri‘s movements are full of iron-rod certainty, and though he‘s not saying much, the enjoyment is radiating off of him, how he gives himself over to the music the same way Victor is giving himself over to him. He‘s laughing freely, every new song beginning with a new burst of joy on Yuuri‘s face, and he really doesn‘t seem to mind, whatever the music.

And Victor finds himself laughing along with him, unable to resist the pull of even the most trite, overused party songs, as long as it‘s within Yuuri‘s arms.

For once, there is something other than a smile on Victor‘s face and he thinks: _Maybe there is something_.

 

  


* * *

  


There is nothing but movement and sound.  
His world is empty, devoid of words and thought and feeling.  
It‘s all movement.  
Two feet under his body, moving. Hands, flying.  
The world is swimming around him. Bursts of light, gasps of sound.

His limbs feel so light, so light.  
Are they still attached to his body, is his head?  
He can feel his heartbeat, a vague stitch in his side, but everything else is floating, unattached.

His head is blissfully empty, except for the music, and he exists only in a note, then a harmony, then a chord.

And then there‘s a burst of a symphony in the touch of a warm hand on his back, a chest flush against his.

He laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs.

The movement feels warm in his muscles and the champagne feels warm in the blood pulsing in his neck, and the music feels warm in his head, right there in that blessed emptiness behind his eyes, and the laughter feels warm just above his stomach, in the hollow of his diaphragm, and he remembers feeling cold the night before, so cold, but what does it matter now, when the touch—that touch—feels so warm along the lining of his spine, in the centre of his bones, tickling in his lungs, and at the back of his neck, right there, where the soft, short hair stands on end, electric.

It‘s so warm, he‘s already forgotten what cold even feels like, the word, the hard sound of it erased from his consciousness like he‘s all fire, all fusion.

 

A starburst, blooming.

The soft vibrations of a voice that tastes like tangerines on his tongue.

A step, a spin, a scattering.

In a split-second movement, the music falters and so does he, stumbling. But the music picks up again and then he‘s flying again, gravity set aside for the moment, forgotten.

He is spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning.

Nothing seems to want to stop.

 

He only realises he still has a hand when warm fingers close around it, and he lets himself be tugged, carefully guided, until there‘s a chair underneath him that he collapses into, unthinking.

A face tumbles into his field of vision, a face like a starburst, blooming, like champagne fizzing in his blood, a face like the taste of tangerines on his tongue. He feels himself smiling.

There‘s music in his mind, and the words come to him unbidden, strum at his soul like a chord, complex and harmonious and sweet, over and over they circle, the only thought.

“You make a fool of death with your beauty and for a moment I forget to worry.“

They tumble through him—sharp liquor. He smiles at the burn of it.

  


* * *

  


Victor is gasping for breath, stumbling.

He‘s not sure if it‘s the dancing or the laughing that‘s caused the sharp stitch in his side. Or maybe it’s Yuuri‘s tender touches, on his waist, his shoulders, his thigh, his neck; always delicate and always just as the dance demands, always firmly on the right side of appropriate.

He’s not sure, but his sides ache, and so do his feet, and he needs a break.

Yuuri shows impossibly no sign of fatigue, but he lets himself be led off the dance floor by Victor‘s hand.

“I need a moment“, Victor huffs as he leads Yuuri to a nearby empty table, “have a seat, and I’ll get us some water.“

Yuuri drops into a chair, all poise seemingly forgotten, still silent, but flushed and looking up at Victor bright-eyed.

Victor‘s glad to find him just like that when he returns with two large glasses of water.

“Drink“, he says with a smile, setting one down in front of Yuuri, before he drinks himself, greedy, his throat and lips dry with exertion.

“Thank you“, Yuuri says, his only words since those first two, and Victor wonders idly if he‘ll ever communicate in more than two syllables.

Once the glasses are empty, Victor‘s chest still heaving, their eyes meet, and they both laugh, helplessly, without provocation or inhibition.

“That was so much fun“, Victor says, though those words barely capture the feeling, “You‘re quite the virtuoso on the dance floor, Yuuri.“

Yuuri smiles, one corner of his mouth quirking up, and Victor thinks he can taste the pleasure sitting in it.

“You too“, Yuuri says, and, two syllables, Victor thinks. There‘s a challenge in it. He leans forward.

“Where‘d you learn to dance like that?“, he asks, feeling smug.

Yuuri opens his mouth. “At home“, he says.

 _Oh_ , Victor thinks, but then Yuuri takes a deep breath and another and straightens up.

“I did—ballet, lots of it, when I was young. My teacher—she‘s a family friend—she said a well-rounded danseur needs, mh, needs to know all types of dance. So I learned. Ballroom, Latin, Modern, uhm, a bit of Jazz, Hip Hop, and... uh, there was something else?“, he trails off, running a hand over his face as if to collect himself.

 _Oh_ , Victor thinks again and feels himself grinning, _that‘s why the monosyllables. He‘s drunk._  
And then he interrupts himself with: _My God, I wonder how he dances when he‘s sober._  
“Breakdancing“, he adds aloud, helpfully, and Yuuri blinks, processing.

“What? Oh. Breaking. Yeah, but that—I didn‘t learn that until I got to Detroit. You know, not, not really the type of dance a Japanese prima will teach you.“

“I wouldn‘t know“, Victor says, laughing, and then, “Which one‘s your favourite?“

Yuuri‘s mouth opens instantly to answer, obviously without taking the detour through his brain.

“Skating.“

Victor chuckles.

“And off the ice?“

Yuuri shakes his head. “I don‘t... It‘s not—“, he shrugs, “Just moving. Dancing. Any which way. Whichever way the music asks for.“

Victor wouldn‘t know what to make of that answer, might find it pretentious even, had he not just witnessed it himself. The way Yuuri becomes one with the music. So he nods in understanding, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

And before he can reply, Yuuri keeps going.

“It‘s just—music, you know? Music is so good. You know how music is so good? Victor—music means everything! You know?“

Victor doesn‘t know—to him, music has always been a means to an end. Music is essential to skating, to its expression, but it‘s never been essential to Victor as a person. Outside of work, he listens to music to fulfil a purpose—to entertain him, to pass the time, to dance to it.

He‘s never been one to listen to music for the sake of listening to music.

He knows music can evoke the strongest of emotions—makes expert use of that knowledge every season to maximise his impact on the audience—but he‘s never been one to be much affected by those emotions himself.

He finds himself not caring. Now that the dam is apparently broken, no more monosyllables, he wants to hear more of what Yuuri has to say. He wants to hear him say his name again.

“You know how sometimes you wanna share music with someone, but, like, not just show them a song, but show ‘em what it means? Like you wanna take it out from right here—“, Yuuri puts his hand flat on his own chest, right over his heart, “—and not just make ‘em listen to it, but make ‘em feel what it means to you right there.“

He moves to do the same to Victor, to press his hand flat on Victor‘s chest in emphasis, right there in the centre, just a little to the left, but he seems to think better of it at the last second, curling his fingers inward, all except the first, the tip of which he just touches to Victor‘s shirt, the lightest of brushes.

“Right there“, he repeats, his voice a little quieter now, “you wanna make them feel what you feel, because music, y’know, music can never be put into words.“

He hums, contemplative.

“I mean, they try. There‘s lyrics. But you ever notice how when you read song lyrics, or you try to quote them to someone who doesn‘t know the song, a part of the significance always goes...“—he makes a quick, flittering movement with his fingers, then pauses, considering, “uh, evanescent, I think, is the word.“

Victor shakes his head, can‘t help the small laugh that bubbles out of him.  
“No, I can‘t say I ever noticed.“

“I mean, see. I can say to you“, and with a sudden unthinking movement, Yuuri touches his warm fingers to Victor‘s arm, just there, around the wrist, under the cuff of his shirt, “I can say to you: ‘You make a fool of death with your beauty and for a moment I forget to worry.‘ But will it ever mean the same to you that it does to me?“

Victor feels the hum of Yuuri‘s touch on his skin, and swallows around the heart suddenly lying on his tongue.

“I—I can‘t say, Yuuri. It‘s beautiful, though. It‘s a song lyric?“

Yuuri makes a small sound in his throat that may or may not be an affirmation.

“‘s Florence“, he says, “Phichit says I talk about Florence too much, but it‘s _so good_ , y’know, and when you find something really good, you just wanna share it with people, because it makes you so happy, and you want it to make other people happy, too.“

He gestures with his left hand, but still hasn‘t removed his right from Victor‘s wrist.

“And I get that not everyone is going to like the thing—people‘s tastes and preferences are different and I respect that, but at the same time—don‘t you ever think, like, I get that you have your own opinion on the matter, but also, your opinion is _wrong_.“

“Oh!“, Victor feels himself light up, because while he might not know much about the intricacies of music tastes, this is a feeling he knows intimately, “Oh, you mean like dogs!“

The answering smile on Yuuri‘s face is like the splitting open of a cherry blossom, an infinitely soft force of nature. To Victor‘s delight, Yuuri‘s alcohol-haze brain understands his less than eloquent interjection immediately.

“Yes! Like dogs!“, he exclaims, a little too loudly perhaps, “Like, I understand there‘s people in this world who do not like dogs, and they have every right to that opinion, but they are so wrong.“

“Yes! Thank you, Yuuri!“

All by itself, Victor‘s other hand finds its way on top of Yuuri‘s hand resting on Victor‘s wrist, squeezing lightly, before he reaches into his pocket to retrieve his phone.

“Have you ever seen my poodle, Yuuri? I‘m sure you would love her.“

Yuuri‘s smile turns impossibly softer.

“Makkachin is the best girl“, he says, and Victor fumbles his passcode twice in his haste to open his photo gallery for Yuuri.

“She really is“, he replies with a wistful sigh, angling his phone so Yuuri can see, “I‘m so lucky to have her. Is there a best girl in your life, Yuuri?“

His eyes cast down onto the screen—Yuuri‘s expression slips for just a moment. His lips move, soundless, for a second, two, then he‘s laughing again, waving his hand as if to chase the moment away.

“There was—there was, a best boy, in fact. But you know how it is with furry friends. Makkachin‘s looking so cute though! Look at her in her little sweater vest! It‘s good that she lives in a place where she can wear cute, warm, cuddly clothes like that!“

And just like that the moment‘s gone and Victor forgets about it as soon as it‘s over, instead giving Yuuri a rundown of Makkachin‘s wardrobe, which he accepts with glee.

That is, until a new song begins some twenty minutes later, and Yuuri‘s head snaps up.  
“Oh“, he breathes, “I love that song.“  
And then his eyes widen as he stares over Victor‘s shoulder and a tide of emotions washes over his face.  
“Oh Chris, you didn‘t“, he breathes, then his gaze flickers down to Victor‘s face, and there it is again: “Fuck it.“

“Victor“, he says, very carefully and deliberately, though his voice is betrayed by the tight grip he has once more curled around Victor‘s forearm, and the smile, halfway between goofy and sultry, that ghosts over his lips, “you wanna see another type of dance I learned in Detroit?“  
“Uh, sure“, Victor says as he pushes up from his chair in order to look over his shoulder, “what are you—oh... Oh, Chris.“

By the time he turns back to Yuuri, slowly, as the implication settles in, Yuuri‘s already unbuckling his belt.

 

  


* * *

  


 

There is that good, good ache.

That beautiful pain, sour in his muscles, that tells him he‘s pushed himself as far as he can go, and then a little further. It‘s in his thighs and his arms and his back; the memory of cool, smooth metal right there next to it on his skin.

Sweat trickling down his back, he‘s buzzing, vibrating out of himself.

The world is still spinning, even with solid ground back under his feet—it‘s tilting, tumbling forward and he follows, lets himself be ushered by gravity itself into that soft touch, that warmth solidified in two arms that catch him as easy as blinking.

He‘s laughing again, can feel it right there in the lining of his stomach—it hurtles out of him like there‘s a time limit, like something‘s coming to an end.

Words hurry along with it, words without thought, heedless, falling from his tongue. He tries to catch them, but there they are, lying in the crook of his arms now, gathering in the folds of his shirt.

He can‘t make them unsaid, so he heaps more laughter on them, piled high, tries to bury them, unseen. Then he gathers himself back together, wraps himself in nonchalance along with his scattered clothes, until there‘s a patched-up rag doll where all the loose pieces of him used to be—not quite a person, but close enough.

Maybe if he keeps laughing, no one will see how he‘s fraying at the seams.

  


* * *

  


Victor tries to breathe through everyone‘s heavy stares on him, on Yuuri; tries to smile through the frantic beating of his heart, as he helps Yuuri get his tie back around his neck.

“Come on, you beautiful disaster“, he says, and he means it maybe a little too much, “how about we get you back to your room?“

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, so I had this already written before I realised that the song Yuuri is quoting, [Hunger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GHXEGz3PJg), didn't come out until 2018. Oops. So Yuuri has done a bit of time-travelling or sth. I couldn't be bothered to change it though, because it fits just too perfectly. Let‘s just pretend that Hunger came out in 2015 on How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, shall we? Just run with it.
> 
> The song that starts off the Pole Dancing is [Bad Habit by The Kooks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tUh-x-fp8Q)
> 
> Chapter title from [Delilah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ50rvySDCk) by Florence + the Machine.  
>  _Now it's one more boy and it's one more lie_  
>  _(holding on for your call)_  
>  _Another drink just to pass the time_  
>  _(I can never say no)_  
>   
>  _Cause I'm gonna be free and I'm gonna be fine_  
>  _(holding on for your call)_  
>  _Cause I'm gonna be free and I'm gonna be fine_  
>  _(maybe not tonight)_  
>   
>  _It's a different kind of danger_  
>  _and my feet are spinning around_  
>  _Never knew I was a dancer_  
>  _'Till Delilah showed me how_
> 
>  
> 
>  **Next Time:**  
>  Some more Victuuri feelings as the boys say goodbye!
> 
> Until then, please feed my children and water my crops by leaving me comments! 🖤 Comments are life, comments are love!


	4. i heard your voice as clear as day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The boys say goodbye.
> 
> All my love as always for my wonderful betas, [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/).
> 
> Once again no CW. Yay!

 

There‘s a long, empty corridor—beige carpet and grey-speckled walls, like the maw of a tedious beast gaping open, nothing lurking at the end.

Its sudden appearance before him—how did he get here?—makes him shiver, like the earth tearing open at his feet, the abyss inviting him in.

 

Yuuri doesn't have a firm grasp on his thoughts, but if there‘s one thing he does know, it‘s that he doesn't want to be back in that rumpled-sheets, crumbs-all-over-the-goddamn-carpet, bathroom-smelling-like-bile and phone-full-of-unanswered-messages hellhole that he‘s left behind this evening. He can‘t.

In a panic he wants to run, but as he turns, there‘s a presence behind him, a warm, steadying hand on his back. He searches that face, expression soft, and certainly Victor wouldn't send him back into that particular hellhole? Certainly Victor is kinder than that.

As Yuuri turns fully toward him, Victor‘s hand moves from his back, to his shoulder, his arm, still so warm and as he meets his gaze, Victor‘s eyes narrow in a small smile, his hair rumpled with sweat and exertion, half swept out of his face, half still falling onto his lashes.

 

For a second, Yuuri is frozen, and it‘s like he can physically feel Victor‘s raw, unbridled aliveness under the stroke of his gaze, he can feel the heat of his skin as his eyes rest on his left cheek, he can feel the pulse of his heartbeat that runs underneath his jaw, he feels every shift of his eyes and the soft dilation of his pupils like a physical push and pull, a tide drawing him in.

This is a person before him, a human being whose skin reddens, whose clothes wrinkle, who sweats and then smells. A body, whole and independent, with alcohol coursing trough its bloodstream, with teeth and a tongue in that mouth of his, with feet aching from exertion. An entire consciousness behind those eyes, with thoughts that are deep and dark and private, never to see the light of day, along with those that he wears on his sleeve, with dreams that he may remember some nights and some nights he doesn't, synapses and nerves and muscles and tendons that now work together in a single flow of action, as Victor smiles at him.

 

And Victor smiles, smiles, smiles at him like he means something, like he is something, and Yuuri can feel his own face fall under the heaviness of it.

Victor’s smile disappears from his field of vision as he casts his eyes down, unable to bear the brightness of it all of a sudden. He stares at the rumpled fabric of Victor’s suit instead and then there’s Victor’s hand gliding down his arm, too warm and too firm and Yuuri would rather shake it off than feel it burn on him, but he can’t bring himself to move.

 

“What’s wrong, Yuuri?”

And now tears are stinging under his eyelids and he sucks in a shaky breath.

“I don’t want this to end”, he hears himself say, “I don’t wanna sober up.“

He flicks his eyes up at Victor‘s face for another moment and the movement has the first tears crashing down his cheeks.

“There‘s nothing in my life.“

 

His voice is barely more than a whisper now, and he doesn't even know if Victor heard him, for he stays silent.

And in between the tears Yuuri tilts his head and glances up at him once more, because meeting his eyes is painful but the silence is worse, not knowing what he‘s thinking is worse.

Victor looks stunned for a few solid seconds, his lips parted as if to say something, but he remains silent, his eyes growing darker, a stormy sadness, by the instant.

Then there‘s movement, and it takes Yuuri a moment to understand that Victor has swept him into a hug, one arm solid around his back, the other hand tenderly petting his hair, still silent, but shaking.

 

* * *

 

 

“I don‘t want this to end“, Yuuri says, and Victor feels a smile tug at his lips.

“I don‘t wanna sober up“, Yuuri says, and he feels it teeter.

“There‘s nothing in my life“, Yuuri says, and it falls.

 

There‘s nothing left on Yuuri‘s face now of the passionate, all-encompassing intensity of the banquet. There‘s just a soft, small sadness and so, so much tiredness, pooling below his eyes and in the corners of his mouth, etched into the creases between his eyebrows.

His hands fidget with the ill-fitting sleeves of his suit and he looks so lost.

And Victor feels like he’s been punched in the chest, right in his sternum, the wind knocked out of him, because he doesn’t know how many times those five words have run through his own head in the last years, and it never gets easier thinking them, never gets less suffocating. But it’s nothing compared to what it feels like to hear these words from the lips of this man, who just came crashing into his life with a sparkling, burning recklessness a few hours ago and, for the first time in years, made him think _maybe there is something_.

He opens his mouth and desperately wants to contradict, wants to tell him there’s plenty—wants to tell him there’s always his family and his friends, but he doesn’t know if that’s true, not really. Yuuri does have a family, he said as much, but Victor has no idea how their relationship is, and it wouldn’t do to rub salt into a wound. He wants to tell him he has skating, always skating, but he knows he does not need a reminder of yesterday’s performance, he suspects how little Yuuri thinks of his own skating right now, and he knows from experience that despite everything, sometimes skating is not enough.

He wants to tell him there‘s always music and dancing and sunsets and puppies, but he knows it will all sound empty and meaningless to him right now, hollow sounds like ashes on his tongue; he knows, because it‘s what Victor tries telling himself whenever those words run through his own head, and it never fails to make him feel worse, make him feel ungrateful and spoiled on top of everything else.

 

He‘s aware that he‘s been silent for too long, he‘s aware of Yuuri‘s uncertain glances, and unable to speak up he just sweeps Yuuri into a hug, hoping to convey all his feeling in this action instead of his words. He buries his fingers in the ruffled hair at the back of Yuuri‘s head, still damp with sweat, and tries to let all the warmth and tenderness that Yuuri has given him tonight seep back into him.

 

For a long time, Victor does not let go, and eventually Yuuri softens up, buries his head in Victor‘s shoulder, his hands a tentative grip at the waist of his suit.

He can‘t let him go without a word, Victor knows, and truly he wants to tell him that he‘ll always be there, that he‘ll always have Victor in his life—but he can‘t promise him that, not really. They live on opposite sides of the world, and they‘re virtually strangers, ships passing in the night, and what would a heartfelt but ultimately hollow promise from a stranger mean in this moment?

He knows—he hopes—no, he knows that he‘s not imagining the connection between them, knows that Yuuri feels it too, not just from the way Yuuri’s fingertips brushed over his skin as they danced as if he was his most precious and most fragile possession, not just from the way he smiled at him that sometimes barely touched his lips but was deep-rooted, always, in his eyes. But also from his words just now that Victor knows he wouldn't have admitted to just anyone, to just a passing acquaintance at yet another boring banquet.

And yet—they both have lives to return to, training and routines and competitions and as much as every reckless fibre in Victor‘s being wants to when he feels the warmth of Yuuri‘s skin under his fingers, he cannot just run away from all of that for a man he just met, no matter how alive he makes him feel, how much he makes his blood fizz with music, how much it aches in his chest to see him so lost.

So he does not whisper the promises that crowd onto his tongue into Yuuri‘s hair, promises he knows he couldn't keep and it wouldn't be fair to make. Instead, he whispers the only words he feels deep in his bones to be true.

 

“You‘re not alone.“

“You‘re not alone, Yuuri.“

“You‘re not alone.“

He doesn't know if his words mean anything to Yuuri, if they even penetrate the late-night alcohol-addled haze of his consciousness, but he keeps repeating them anyway, maybe for his own benefit as much as for Yuuri‘s.

 

His tongue feels heavy by the time he finally releases him, and Yuuri sways on the spot, heavy-lidded and drowsy. Victor knows the time has come to let him go, and the next words on his lips feel almost too mundane to say out loud, after the otherworldly fog that shrouds the last few hours of his life, and the cold, sobering shower of the last half hour, but he knows he needs to get them out.

“You’ll call me, won’t you?“

Yuuri’s head snaps up at that and he meets his eyes again, not quite awake, far from sober or even coherent, but hopeful, almost determined.

“Can I?“

“Of course, Yuuri. I told you, we‘ll definitely stay in touch. My number‘s in your phone. Call me, or text me, anything.“

Victor tilts his head down slightly, ducking to stay in Yuuri‘s line of sight, his eyelids now drooping again, blinking heavily.

“Just... don‘t forget about me, okay?“

“I would never.“

The corners of Yuuri‘s mouth twitch upwards for the shortest of moments, and Victor feels a twinge of something bittersweet in his chest and a small smile spread on his own lips. He‘ll be okay. He will be.

“Goodnight, Yuuri. Sweet dreams.“

Yuuri regards him for a long moment, swaying against the door of his room with a soft thud, before he speaks.

“Goodnight, Victor.“

 

Victor waits until Yuuri has fumbled the key from his pocket and the door open before he turns away, unwilling to see the door fall shut on the only bright thing in his life with a click that feels unbearably final.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a couple of small easter eggs in this chapter. Brownie points if you find them! 😉
> 
> Chapter title from [Only If For a Night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkJK2KVFsi0) by Florence + the Machine:  
>  _And I heard your voice_  
>  _As clear as day_  
>  _And you told me I should concentrate_  
>  _It was all so strange_  
>  _And so surreal_  
>  _That a ghost should be so practical_  
>  _Only if for a night_
> 
>  
> 
>  **Next Time:**  
>  The morning after and lots of hungover travelling.
> 
> Comments feed my soul! 🖤🖤🖤


	5. for a moment i forget to worry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The morning after. Hangovers! Traveling!
> 
> My betas are lovely and deserving of praise after they talked me down from the ledge with this mess of a chapter. Thanks to [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/)!
> 
> CW in the end notes, though once again it's nothing major.

 

Somewhere underneath all the pain, there’s music in his head.

The pain is dull, far away at first, a thrumming pressure at the back of his skull and a swirling nausea in his stomach. It comes in waves whenever he moves and, cresting, they crash over him as his mind slowly comes back to itself, comes back awake, his consciousness returning to him in a trickle, like a dried up river, a leaking tap.

By the time Yuuri actually opens his eyes, he‘s in agony.

That‘s why he doesn't pay attention to the music at first.

But as he peels himself out of his stale-smelling hotel sheets with a string of muttered curses that no one is there to hear, still in his suit from the night before, now dishevelled and crumpled, as he downs a full bottle of water along with two acetaminophen, he slowly becomes aware that there’s a snippet of a melody repeating in his head.

He ignores it at first—it‘s not the first time he‘s woken up with a song stuck in his head, and right now there are more pressing matters.

It‘s only after he‘s washed his face of sweat and grime and cleans his teeth of the sour, gravelly taste of last night‘s alcohol that he takes the time to examine it. As soon as he thinks about it he knows that it‘s Florence and the Machine, but it takes him a second and a few deliberate hums of the scrap of melody in front of the bathroom mirror before he knows which song it‘s from.

He considers while he undresses with slow, deliberate movements, wary of the grinding pain pressing on his brain, before stepping into the shower. It‘s not until he‘s rubbing shampoo into his hair with lazy movements that his sleep- and alcohol-addled thoughts finally supply the lyrics he‘s been trying to grasp.

_You make a fool of death with your beauty and for a moment I forget to worry._

He’s always thought that the song ended too abruptly—it‘s ominous, the sudden silence after that line. It might be supposed to represent the reprieve from bad thoughts, a well-deserved break.  
But Yuuri‘s always felt it was more of a stopping short, a seizing, holding your breath before everything crashes back. Because it‘s just a moment, a single one—it‘s a tear, a chasm, a calm, yes, but only before the storm.

It‘s where he is now—his head is pleasantly empty as the hot water runs down his body. He‘s pretty sure that he‘s still more than a little tipsy from the night before, but for the moment, he doesn't question it. Just revels in the short breath of air, the quick inhale before the disaster that is his life comes crashing back down around him.

It doesn't last, of course.

By the time he‘s out of the shower and faced with the monumental task of dressing himself, he‘s already shaking again, tempted to crawl back into the sheets. Tempted to send Celestino away when he comes to collect him for their flight back to Detroit, and ignore the world for a few more precious days.

But the world doesn't stop. It doesn't wait for him.

Neither does his flight, so he lets Celestino drag him out of the hotel room, once it‘s been carefully cleared of all his possessions.

He doesn't look back—figuratively, that is—literally he does look back quite extensively, checking and double checking the bathroom, the crevices of the bed, the wardrobe, the bedside table, his worry about leaving something behind for a few moments stronger than his bone-deep exhaustion.

It‘s like he‘s collecting himself, slowly, one item at a time, deodorant, a glove, a book that he hasn't opened once all weekend, puts them together until they form the semblance of a coherent person without any visible, gaping holes that would attract curious glances on the way to the airport.

He’s thankful that once they settle into the cab, Celestino likewise settles into silence. He seems to be well aware of Yuuri‘s hangover, makes a few comments about it, as Yuuri groans and grumbles on the way through the hotel, that are sure to be meant teasing rather than snide.

(Right now, Yuuri can‘t really tell the difference.)

But it‘s not until they‘re in the cab that he has the time to think about what he‘s forgotten. Because he‘s aware that he‘s forgotten—of course he is—how could he not, when there‘s a gaping, champagne-shaped hole in his memory.

(He remembers the champagne. Remembers drinking it, remembers the cool bubbles on his tongue, remembers not really caring for the taste of it, but caring even less for not being drunk. He doesn't so much remember as he can still taste at the back of his throat and in his nose the sharp burn of the alcohol for a second time as it left his system again at some point late at night. He must have made it to the bathroom, though, because he hasn't left a mess anywhere in the hotel room.)

He doesn't really remember anything else except that he‘s forgotten, and he doesn't have a lot of hope of recovering any of it. He knows how his brain works, this isn't the first time this has happened. And as a rule whatever is gone by the next morning will stay gone.

There‘s only a few flashes of memory that he‘s managed to hold onto, almost all of them feeling and sound, no visuals whatsoever.

There‘s movement, lots of it, spinning and spinning and spinning, it almost makes him dizzy just to think about it.

There‘s laughter, he remembers that, both as a tingling in his ears and a dull ache of overexertion in his own diaphragm.

There‘s that Florence song, though that needn't have anything to do with last night—sometimes songs just pop into his head like that, unbidden. It happens.

And then there’s a single phrase he remembers hearing, though it‘s so drenched in darkness and black-out heaviness that he’s not sure if it‘s a memory or a part of his weirdly intense alcohol-induced haze-dreams.

“Don‘t forget about me.“

He huffs out a laugh at the irony of it, low enough that it‘s drowned out by the hum of the engine. Then he leans his forehead against the cool window of the cab and shrugs to himself, unapologetic.

Remembering is the last thing he wants to do.

 

* * *

 

Victor sleeps well that night, sleeps a deep sleep filled with soft champagne-coloured dreams.

He doesn't catch a glimpse of Yuuri at the hotel or the airport the next morning.  
He didn't really expect to, just hoped, the way that one hopes for good things to happen, vague and idle. The way that Victor always, at heart, underneath it all, hopes for good things to happen.

The good thing doesn't happen this time and Victor tries to be okay with that.

But inevitably—in between the sobering shower, the brisk winter air, the trite routine of luggage, key cards, cabs—the rose-gold-coloured veil that softened his vision last night is starting to pull back. The unbridled enjoyment and the now-unfamiliar buzz of emotion in his veins takes on a bittersweet tang.

Victor spends the entirety of the flight back to St. Petersburg going over his night with Yuuri again. Over all the things Yuuri said. And in the mostly sober and slightly hungover light of day, he sees the cracks in Yuuri‘s smile everywhere.

There‘s so many of them, he wonders how it still stayed put right there on his lips, how it didn't slide off with every movement, how it barely even jostled.

He wonders how he didn't see them, right up until it burst into jagged pieces right in front of him.

Now, all of a sudden, he can read them everywhere, in all of Yuuri‘s words, his actions.

_Fuck it._

He‘d known of course that Yuuri hasn't had a good weekend by any standards, but in the crowded banquet hall, surrounded by people, his words had the air of someone dusting themselves off after a fall. Of picking themselves up and trying again.

Now, sitting in an uncomfortable airplane seat, drinking mediocre coffee, it sounds dismissive, desperate. It sounds like running away. It sounds like defeat.

Defeat.

It was sitting right there, under a thin layer of fun drunkenness, stifled but festering.

What was that song that Yuuri had quoted?

_You make a fool of death with your beauty, and for a moment I forget to worry._

A song lyric, he‘d said. By an artist Victor doesn't think he‘s heard of. Florence, was it? Like the Italian city? Like Florence Nightingale? He will have to look it up once he lands.

Yuuri had wanted to share it with him—not just the music, but what it meant to him.

Victor would do his best to try and understand. In the meantime he tries to put it out of his mind, seeing as he has no way of getting any more information just now, but the phrase keeps repeating itself in his mind, an unbidden mantra. He doesn’t even know the melody, and the fact that it doesn’t quite rhyme is driving him mad.

_You make a fool of death with your beauty, and for a moment I forget to worry._

There has to be a reason why Yuuri chose that song, that line, right? Is it presumptuous of Victor to hope that it was directed at him, after the way Yuuri kept returning to him throughout the night, after the way he‘d touched his skin with a warm, soft hand when he‘d said those words?

Is it presumptuous for him to want to be the beauty that makes Yuuri forget about his worries?

But then—death. That‘s the word that puzzles him most.

Is it an existential sort of death? The non-specific spectre of mortality and failure and time passing? Victor almost hopes it is, because what‘s the alternative?

_There‘s nothing in my life._

He doesn't even want to think about the alternative.

But surely it was just an idle thought? A phrase popped into Yuuri‘s mind that rang true with him at that moment? There doesn't have to be anything literal about it. He was talking about music. This is a song he particularly likes, most likely. That‘s all there is to it, surely. Maybe it will make more sense in context, within the larger scope of the song.

Now Victor‘s thoughts are going round in circles and with a deep breath he tries to force himself to put it out of his mind. This will get him nowhere until he can actually look up the song.

Idly he taps on his phone screen, more out of force of habit than any actual interest in using it, but the picture of Makkachin on his lockscreen brings something else to the forefront of his mind.

_There was, a best boy, in fact. But you know how it is with furry friends._

He didn't think anything of it at the time. It seemed like such an offhand comment, and it is true, too—it cannot be helped that you are always, inevitably, eventually, left behind by your beloved pets. Last night, Victor hadn't given it another thought; it seemed far away, long past, perhaps.

But this, too, he needs to re-evaluate in the light of morning; the way Yuuri hadn't met his eyes, the way he‘d changed the subject so quickly, the way his voice had been so carefully casual.

Is he overthinking now? Projecting his own fears onto someone he effectively barely knows? Because he doesn't, he’s aware, not truly.

What he does have are snippets, glimpses into another person’s mind, patches sewn together, warped as they are by alcohol and adrenaline. He doesn't know Yuuri.

But he would like to, he would. He hopes he will be given the chance, the way that he always, at heart, underneath it all, hopes for good things to happen.

It‘s a hope maybe a little more than vague and idle.

He‘s almost dozed off, sunk low in his seat, his mind wandering, strolling leisurely through recollections of music and movement, when another memory strikes him. He runs it through his fingers like sand, wincing at the coarseness of it.

_Come on, you beautiful disaster. How about we get you back to your room?_

_Ha, I‘m a disaster alright._

Yuuri had said it so cheerfully that Victor couldn't help but agree at the time, thinking of earthquakes and volcanoes, something monumental and earth-shattering.

Now he suspects that Yuuri was rather thinking of violent, jarring things—forest fires. Train wrecks.

 

The first thing Victor does when he lands in St. Petersburg is check for messages from Yuuri.

When he doesn't find any, the next thing he does is google "florence music". He's surprised how quickly he finds what he's looking for.

He wants to immerse himself in the results immediately, aching to learn more. But there's the baggage claim and his teammates and his coach and fans and paparazzi at the airport, demanding his presence, his attention, his smile. So he smiles. And forces himself to wait until he gets out of the cab at his building, bidding a distracted goodbye to Yakov and Yura, before he presses play on the song, earbuds hastily shoved into his ears.

By the time he unlocks his front door, his vision is already swimming.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief implied vomiting
> 
> chapter title from (surprise surprise) [Hunger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GHXEGz3PJg) by Florence + the machine:  
>  _"Oh, but you and all your vibrant youth._  
>  _How could anything bad ever happen to you?_  
>  _You make a fool of death with your beauty, and for a moment_  
>  _I forget to worry."_
> 
> I tried googling "florence music" on a couple different devices, with and without incognito mode, and for me Hunger was always the very first video result. not sure if that's true for anyone else, though.
> 
> This will be the last we see of Victor's POV for a while, I'm afraid.  
>  **Next time** there will be 100% more Peaches, tho! 🍑🍑🍑


	6. i know you're bleeding but you'll be okay - pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is better with peaches. 🍑🍑🍑
> 
> This chapter and the next should really go together. but since I cannot contain my word count, I split them up.
> 
> As always, lots of love for my betas, [Sam](http://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/)! 🖤

 

Phichit knows, as long as Yuuri is still dancing, he‘ll be okay.

 

Yuuri‘s dancing was one of the first things that Phichit learned about after they moved in together—one of the first things that was real, that mattered, anyway. One of the first things that helped him learn to live with this contradictory creature that he suddenly found himself spending most of his time with.

In Detroit, Yuuri cannot go to the rink at all hours of the night, when the nerves worry holes into his head, when he finds himself pulled taut with anxiety and apprehension. The rink is too far from their apartment, and anyway, it‘s booked most of the time, even late into the night, with training sessions, hockey practice, private lessons. In Detroit, Yuuri is just one of many students, and he cannot selfishly claim his alone time on the ice as much as he would like.

So in Detroit, Yuuri takes to dancing in order to clear his head in the dark hours.  
Phichit suspects that he did it in his own room for the first few weeks of their cohabitation, though he really cannot think where he found the space in between his bed and his desk and his dresser crammed into the small space. But eventually he feels comfortable enough around Phichit to move into the more spacious living room.

That‘s where Phichit finds him one night, as he gets up a few hours after midnight to go to the bathroom. It‘s the beginning of the season, and they are still trying to find their bearings, in their new programs, their new routines, their new living arrangements. Yuuri had been feverishly trying to grasp the feeling of his new short program all week, and Phichit could see the worry gnawing at him in the evening, as they returned to their flat. But he and Yuuri, still just shy of that unspoken divide where rinkmates-and-flatmates-and-friends turned into something just that little deeper, more trusting, more real, hadn't talked about it.

And now he opens the door of his bedroom in the middle of the night and sees light in the living room down the hall. One of them must have forgotten to turn it off, he thinks, and takes a few tentative steps in the direction of the light switch, when he sees Yuuri‘s movement.

Yuuri is dancing in the empty space in between the back of the sofa and the half divide leading into the kitchen, his feet bare on the faded blue linoleum. He has his earbuds in and Phichit cannot hear what he‘s listening to, but he sees the fluent, sweeping movements of his body across the living room floor. It‘s not his short program, that much is clear—his steps are too quick, his small jumps too spirited for the slow, solemn minor of his short program music.

For half a minute Phichit watches him, trying to apply some rhyme or reason to his steps, find some kind of style—it‘s not ballet, though he keeps his toes pointed and the line of his back graceful, sharp. It‘s not modern dance, though some of the sharper turns and dips suggest that kind of style. It‘s not ballroom, because there‘s no clear progression of steps and he‘s alone, though he moves with a kind of conviction that makes Phichit think he‘s leading an invisible partner.

His hair is clinging to the skin of his forehead and his neck, glistening with sweat, and he‘s not wearing his glasses.

He hasn't seen Phichit yet and Phichit tries to keep himself carefully out of his line of sight, though Yuuri has his eyes closed most of the time anyway, so he sometimes bumps into the backrest of the sofa, or brushes the wall to the kitchen, extending a quick hand to steady himself.

Phichit can see the frustration about his short program in every one of his movements—the stubborn determination to get it right in the reaching of his hands, the slow wearing down of his poise in the wavering of his steps, the flickering of self-doubt in the incline of his head.

Phichit thinks about talking to him, asking him what he‘s doing and if there‘s anything he needs—but honestly this feels so much like a routine that Yuuri is intimately familiar with, something that goes way beyond their friendship, beyond this apartment, beyond Detroit, into a territory of Yuuri‘s life that Phichit is still a stranger to. He doesn’t want to intrude. Not unless Yuuri invites him to.

So he retreats, goes to the bathroom and quietly returns to his bed.

The next morning, as they return to the rink, Yuuri appears much calmer, and while it still takes him a few days to really fall into the groove of his short program, he works on it now with much more resolve and much less frustration.

 

Over the next months, Phichit learns a lot about Yuuri‘s musical coping mechanism.

Yuuri invites him in, slowly, into this part of his life as well as all the others, as they become more comfortable around each other and that unspoken divide that Phichit had still felt the first time he watched Yuuri dance in their living room quietly fades away.

He learns that the dancing keeps him centred when his world feels off kilter, that it keeps him calm when his mind is a buzzing knot of worry, it keeps him fluid when his whole body is freezing up with tension.

He learns that Yuuri doesn't really mind when Phichit watches, but he prefers not to know when he does. And Phichit can see why—can see the lines of tension that creep into his fluid movements when he feels Phichit‘s gaze at the back of his neck. No matter how much they trust each other, Phichit understands this is something that is just for Yuuri, something intimate that isn't meant to exclude Phichit but that he cannot quite invite him into. Phichit really doesn't mind—occasionally, he will check on Yuuri when he‘s up at night and hears his soft footfall in the living room, but other than that he leaves him to it. There‘s so much that they share and Phichit doesn't feel like he‘s missing out by leaving this for Yuuri alone.

Most importantly, however, he learns that Yuuri has no taste in music.

Which is not to say that his taste in music is bad. But he will dance to anything.  
Which is not to say that he doesn't care about the music. But for him, there‘s no such thing as a guilty pleasure when it comes to music.

What Yuuri needs is the right music in the right moment. He will spend hours and hours on YouTube and Spotify and 8tracks and Bandcamp, scouring through the most obscure bands and artists, falling down one rabbit hole after another, trying to find that one track that perfectly captures the shade and texture of the thoughts hounding his mind at any given moment. And that perfect track may be a soft, pattering piano piece composed and performed by a conservatory student from Peru, but it may just as well be a Taylor Swift song, or some weirdly shrill and upbeat J-Pop track, or a fast-paced power metal song.

Phichit will always remember that one gloomy October when Yuuri was obsessed with a Japanese-German acoustic guitar singer-songwriter for a few weeks, filling their apartment with the sound of softly plucked strings and wistful fairytale-like lyrics on every rainy afternoon. Or else the spring of The xx, all electronic drums and oscillating bass guitar, wrapped in emotional vocals like a strangely soft blanket, a kind of music that seems to Phichit to defy any and all generic categories.

Equally as memorable, though for entirely different reasons, was his short stint with Bollywood songs, because it brought the first of only a handful of instances when Yuuri actively roped Phichit into his dancing activities by convincing him to learn the dance routine of possibly the catchiest song Phichit has ever heard in his life.

(Not that Phichit needed much convincing. He’d practically pounced on Yuuri the first time he‘d ever heard him play that song, asking where it was from. And trying to learn a silly dance routine with his adorable roommate until they were both lying on the floor wheezing with laughter and exertion was pretty close to his idea of a perfect night).

For his next birthday, Phichit quietly gets Yuuri a pair of solid bluetooth headphones, the best he can afford with his budget. Yuuri accepts them with just as quiet a thankfulness, and from then on he swaps them out for his flimsy earbuds whose sound really can‘t be all that good and whose cords keep getting in the way of his movements.

 

Phichit slowly learns to gauge Yuuri‘s mental state from his dancing, a helpful tool, since Yuuri is ready to accept help when offered, but terrible about asking for it when he needs it.  
So Phichit pays attention to the music Yuuri listens to as he dances, and to the emotions in his dancing.

(Yuuri never bothers to stick to any one dance style in his nightly exertion—he just moves in whatever way feels right. But with every new obscure genre of music and dance style he discovers, a few new elements will make their way into his repertoire, to be used freely in combination with all the elements from ballet, ballroom, swing dance, jazz dance, and things that Phichit cannot even begin to identify.)

He knows a few benchmarks of Yuuri‘s music library that he will return to again and again because they’re comforting, safe, known. Whatever Yuuri listens to Phichit relates to these fix points to get an idea of how Yuuri is feeling.

(They have taken to playing Six Degrees of Florence and the Machine, because Florence is Yuuri‘s default when he is feeling down, the right mixture of melancholy and energy for his restless brain.)

But no matter what the music, Phichit has learned, as long as Yuuri is still dancing at all, he will be okay. He‘ll be okay, because it means he has already identified the problem in his mind, and is trying to work through it.

 

That‘s why Phichit is not too worried about Yuuri when he returns from Sochi.

He is worried—he is.  
He sees the traces of the Grand Prix Final on Yuuri as clear as day.

He sees the pain weighing on his shoulders, the grief etched deep into every line of his face, the shame trembling in his fingers.

And he worries, because Yuuri will not talk about Sochi—barely about the competition itself, and not at all about anything that goes beyond it. Phichit knows enough about the facts of the matter, pieced together from what he’s seen on the livestream, from what Celestino tells him, from Yuuri‘s silences.

He knows about Vicchan, and that is the knowledge that weighs the heaviest on him.  
He can barely imagine the pain that Vicchan‘s death must have brought Yuuri—he‘s had hamsters for most of his life, and has inevitably lost a few of them over the years. Every time the loss of it had felled him like a suckerpunch to the stomach.

(It has only happened once since he‘s lived together with Yuuri, and that was the only time that Yuuri had been the one to hold Phichit through his sobs, both of them huddled up in blankets on Yuuri‘s bed, Yuuri petting his hair and whispering calming words to him as he shook.)

He loves his hamsters so much, each and every one of them, even if he knows that they will stay with him for a limited time only—he wouldn't and couldn't keep his heart guarded against the loss of them, even if he tried.

He can‘t even imagine what a hole it must have left in Yuuri‘s chest, to have Vicchan taken away from him after spending such a big part of his life with him, loving him, caring for him. To have that loss take place in his absence, unable to even say goodbye feels like a twist of the knife that even Phichit can feel in his gut.

But Yuuri will not talk about it, not about Vicchan, not about the Final, not any of it, no matter if Phichit gently prods him or leaves him his space, or tries to distract him, or to make him laugh.  
Yuuri remains silent through all of it, not literally, but virtually, refusing to speak of anything that matters.

After a few dark days, however, a few days of getting over the jetlag, of too much junk food and too few showers, of soft Florence and the Machine songs floating out of Yuuri‘s room, followed by a new rabbit hole of increasingly weird and gloomy music, Yuuri starts training again in earnest for Nationals, and a couple of nights after that, Phichit finds him dancing again in their living room, so really, he isn't all that worried.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [Various Storms & Saints](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnsDi3V9-Vo) by Florence and the Machine.  
>  _"I know you're bleeding, but you'll be okay._  
>  _Hold on to your heart, you'll keep it safe._  
>  _Hold on to your heart, don't give it away._
> 
> _You'll find a rooftop to sing from_  
>  _Or find a hallway to dance._  
>  _You don't need no edge to cling from,_  
>  _Your heart is there, it's in your hands._  
>  _I know it seems like forever._  
>  _I know it seems like an age._  
>  _But one day this will be over,_  
>  _I swear it's not so far away._
> 
>    
> I've been looking forward to this: Here's some of the music mentioned in the chapter.  
> The German-Japanese singer-songwriter, Haruko: [Man in the Moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJev9rpRjHA)  
> The impossible to categorise, The xx: [Basic Space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGYlXpZwWeE)  
> The catchiest song in the world, from the Movie Jab Tak Hai Jaan: [Jiya Re](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smn3mDBOUy4)  
> I have absolutely attempted to learn that dance routine. 
> 
> **Next time** : More fuzzy fruit (and nutty music)!
> 
> Comments mean everything to me 🖤🖤🖤


	7. tear it down in your head - pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my friends and --wow! welcome everyone! I don't know what happened but the subscriptions on this almost doubled in the last week, so welcome everyone who's joined us!  
> What's brought you here? I hope you're enjoying yourself and happy suffering! 😏
> 
> Here's part 2 of Phichit's chapter - enjoy.
> 
> As always, my betas [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/) are the real MVPs.

 

Since Yuuri has come home, Phichit has taken to leaving his bedroom door open just a little at all times, just in case Yuuri needs anything—just so he knows that Phichit‘s there whenever he feels ready to talk about it. And he‘s sure eventually Yuuri will be ready to talk about it. Surely, time is all he needs.

So when he wakes up in the middle of the night, and distantly registers soft light falling onto his bed through the crack in the door, relief washes over him. He takes a moment to listen, strains his ears, and he can hear Yuuri‘s soft footfall in the living room.

Quietly, he gets out of bed and makes his way down the hallway.

Yuuri is dancing alright, headphones on his ears, and Phichit can make out a harsh beat bleeding out softly from under the ear cushions. It‘s not something he has heard before, he doesn't think—probably a find from Yuuri‘s newest rabbit hole. It has something of a club beat, but at the same time it‘s darker, more driving, monotone and broken up at once.

Yuuri‘s dancing is sharper tonight, less flowing, less graceful. The movements of his arms are almost violent, almost demanding, sharp punches alternating with large, sweeping motions, desperate. His feet roll back sharply, from his toes down to his heels, the swaying of his body most noticeable in his hips, but not in the fluid sway of a Latin beat, nor in the sensual one of a club beat—instead, his body tilts back harshly, every movement seeming to almost send him off balance. A few times, his knees buckle under him and Phichit almost wants to rush forward, an involuntary reflex to try and catch him, but it seems to be part of the dance, because he‘s back on his feet again in an instant, without an interruption to the fluidity of his movements.

Phichit stays for a while, listening to the ebb and flow of the beats drifting towards him, songs bleeding into each other almost seamlessly, only a momentary faltering of Yuuri‘s movement indicating to him that one song ends and the next begins, the rhythm shifting subtly.

He can hear that there‘s lyrics to the songs, but he cannot make out any of the words. He makes a mental note to try and find out the path of Yuuri‘s new rabbit hole in the next days, but in the meantime, he goes back to bed, somewhat appeased.

Yuuri is dancing.  
He will be okay.

 

* * *

 

He does find out about the music soon after.

He casually tries to bring up the topic of music the next evening as they lounge in front of the TV, Phichit watching Brooklyn 99 on Netflix as Yuuri types away on his laptop next to him. Phichit sees the familiar interface of Spotify on his screen and figures this might be as good an opportunity as any. He half expects to have to drag it out of Yuuri, as so many things these days, but Yuuri seems almost eager to talk about it, when Phichit asks about any new music he‘s found lately.

That's how Phichit finds out that it‘s some weird American Industrial project that has left their best days behind a decade ago. Phichit has heard the name before, but only in obscure references and weird memes—he doesn't think he‘s ever heard any of their songs.

Yuuri plays [one of them](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R_I2G_mWsc) for him over the tinny speakers of his laptop and Phichit raises his eyebrows.

“This is... very different“, he says, trying not to sound too put off. It‘s too strange for him by half, too harsh, not enough of a melody even to be thought of as music.

Yuuri shrugs.

“Some of their stuff is really, really weird. Like, more random noises strung together than anything else. Apparently that was quite revolutionary back in their day. I don‘t really care for those parts. But they have some very good songs to dance to, strong beats, kinda catchy.“

His eyes flicker up at Phichit for a second, then he looks away, biting his lips.

“What is it?“, Phichit asks, leaning back on the sofa, trying to sound casual. This is pretty much the most that Yuuri has talked of his own accord since he got back.

“It‘s just—“, he begins, then cuts himself off, starts again, “They—I like their lyrics. Some of them anyway. They feel... familiar, you know. It‘s like...“, he motions vaguely with his hand toward his own head. “There‘s a lot of... getting lost in your own head. Feeling like you don‘t belong. Desperately wanting, and falling short. I guess. That‘s how I read them, anyway. They could be about a lot of other things, I guess. Like schizophrenia? Or taking drugs. Or paranoia. But I just—yeah. They feel familiar.“

Later Phichit tries to listen to a few more of their songs. Yuuri has given him some recommendations of the less strange ones, and he tries, he does. But he can‘t make it through them, just skips through them to get a feeling of the music, and then googles the lyrics.

He‘s not sure he understands them, but there‘s one song that he listens to a few times more, the one that Yuuri played for him, which he also recognises as one that Yuuri danced to the night before. And it does sound like something that would go through Yuuri‘s mind, it does. But he doesn‘t worry about it too much, because this means that Yuuri is dealing with it and it‘s a good sign that he talked to him about it, and he‘s dancing, so he‘ll be okay. He will be.

 

* * *

Yuuri is not dancing now.

 

He returns from Nationals with his shoulders slumped even more than before, what little poise he‘d regained in the weeks leading up to the competition beaten out of him again.  
He accepts Celestino‘s consoling words and Phichit‘s encouragements and both of their hugs with equal measures of numbness and placidity, and remains resolutely silent on anything that matters.

Phichit leaves him to his own devices for a few days, hoping that he‘ll pick himself back up the way he‘d seemed to do after the Final, but it gets worse.

It gets worse, because the living room stays stubbornly, desolately dark and silent at night, Yuuri‘s headphones abandoned on the sideboard in the living room, unmoving, slowly gathering dust. The flat is devoid of music, unless Phichit puts it on himself. There‘s no Florence, not even any of the weird, anxious new stuff. Phichit feels like the silence is choking him gently.

 

It gets worse, because now, Yuuri is not even training. 

He refuses to come to the rink. The season is over for him, he says, so he might as well take a few weeks off, concentrate on his classes. 

(He‘s not concentrating on his classes.) 

He won‘t go running with Phichit in the mornings, or go to the gym with him for conditioning, claiming tiredness, and the cold, and once again classes.

He just needs a little more time, Phichit thinks, even as he‘s trying to dredge some semblance of a conversation out of Yuuri; he‘ll be fine, he thinks. Because even if he isn't dancing or training, at least he comes out of his room, he hangs out with Phichit in the living room, as usual, lounges on the couch, barely watching whatever is Phichit‘s latest Netflix find.

 

But it gets worse.

It gets worse, because one day Phichit stops by the flat for lunch in between training and classes, just to check on Yuuri, and through the open door of his room, he sees Yuuri calmly and carefully taking off all the Victor Nikiforov posters from his walls.

Phichit watches, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as Yuuri peels off the washi tape from the corners with diligence, then folds or rolls the posters, filing them away in a large folder to be stashed away in a corner of his dresser.

“What are you doing?“

Yuuri turns to him slowly, and he doesn't seem to be surprised to see him, nor does he seem to mind that Phichit has caught him in the middle of this.

He doesn‘t quite meet Phichit‘s eyes, and shrugs.

“It just.... I just feel like it‘s time to take them down.“

“Why?“  
Phichit sucks in a sharp breath.  
“Yuuri, did something happen with Victor in Sochi?“

“No.“

“Yuuri! Did you talk to him? Was he rude to you? Is he a jerk? Because I can beat him up for you, if he‘s a jerk.“

“Phichit, no. Nothing at all happened. He was perfectly pleasant and charming to his fans, as he always is.“

Yuuri turns back to the wall and begins pulling off magazine clippings from his pin board. His tone is carefully neutral.

“Then why are you taking them down?“

“It just seems... presumptuous. You know?“

Phichit doesn't know, and he says as much, but no matter how he pokes and prods, Yuuri resolutely does not say more on the issue, and eventually Phichit really needs to leave for class.

 

When he comes home after, the door of Yuuri‘s room is closed, and he does not come out to spend the evening with Phichit on the couch.

 

Whenever Phichit wakes up at night, the living room is dark and empty, and Yuuri is not dancing.

 

So, Phichit is worried.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri's vent music here is of course Nine Inch Nails.  
> [Here's a](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R_I2G_mWsc) [couple of](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkUrZvbh9bU) [the songs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwvLlEtxX3o) [Yuuri likes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7eAdBg6Z38).  
> (The first one is the one that Yuuri shows Phichit.)  
> [And here's what they mean by the weirder things they do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx2fnyOnp8k).  
> If anyone is interested in Yuuri's NIN playlist, let me know and I'll write you a list ;)
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter title from [Various Storms & Saints](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vi5iYvTrFQ) by Florence + the Machine.  
>  _The monument of a memory_  
>  _You tear it down in your head_  
>  _Don't make the mountain your enemy_  
>  _Get out, get up there instead_  
>   
> 
>  **Next Time:** What Yuuri does instead of Dancing.
> 
> Thank you so much everyone for your support! 🖤  
> Your comments mean the world to me!


	8. all this killing time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...aaand we're back with Yuuri.
> 
> all the thanks, as always, to my betas, [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/). and of course thank you to all you lovely people for reading my story and letting me know you enjoy it in any way 🖤
> 
> we got some **CW** for this chapter, see end notes.

 

At some point, Yuuri becomes distantly aware that he is spiralling.

Not for a while, though: for a while, everything feels too raw to even think about.

It‘s not that he thinks he’s doing okay, it‘s rather that he‘s not thinking at all, he closes himself firmly out of his own head.

At some point during the disastrous Nationals, he shuts down, and while he‘s vaguely aware that he put on brave smiles and half-hearted assurances for Mari and Minako-sensei, who came out to support him, they slide off of him like oil on water, the second they are out of sight.

And by the time they‘ve landed back in Detroit, he‘s shrouded himself in a thick blanket of silence that Celestino makes no attempt to penetrate during their long flight across the Pacific.  
Yuuri can feel the disappointment radiating off of him, and he can‘t face the thought of having to explain himself. Not that there‘s anything to explain: he‘s failed. That‘s all.

Phichit, of course, is more insistent, but by that time, Yuuri is too far gone, too far removed from himself to even feel bad about shutting out his friend.  
He knows this is something he has to do, knows it deep in his bones and the soles of his feet without having to take the detour of thinking about it. He needs to do this, needs to take himself out of the equation for a while, or else he‘s going to break.

So this is what he does: he doesn‘t think. He doesn’t skate because he can‘t face the ice right now, and because he can‘t skate without thinking. He doesn‘t run because he can‘t run without thinking, and he doesn‘t dance, because he can‘t dance without thinking. Movement and thought, to him, are inextricably entwined - he can‘t have one without the other. He doesn‘t move, so that he doesn‘t need to think.

He does need something else to occupy his mind, something mindless, something thoughtless, something empty that will still fill up the entirety of his awareness.

He turns to music, first, always his first solace, burrowing deeper than ever into what Phichit has taken to calling his rabbit holes, but he doesn‘t really hear any of it. He finds a whole host of new artists, files them away meticulously in his library, sorted by name, genre, country of origin, release date, themes, with or without lyrics, skateable or not (for an undefined future), but he doesn‘t hear. He barely even _listens_ to music anymore, because it‘s not enough, not enough to occupy his mind, not unless he really listens, and if he really listens he‘s going to have to consider the music; he‘ll have to feel it, which means he‘ll have to think, and that‘s not something he can do.

So he doesn‘t really listen to music anymore, not unless he‘s got something else to do that occupies his mind, in which case he doesn‘t really hear it anyway, so really, he doesn‘t listen to music anymore.

He clings to his classwork for a bit, and that works surprisingly well.

It keeps his mind just engaged enough, focused entirely on topics that are thoroughly uninteresting, and, by extension, thoroughly harmless.

It makes him miserable in the way that classwork always does: despite his mild interest in the material, this isn‘t something he does for the passion of it, like skating or dancing or even cooking, this is something he does for the necessity of a diploma, and while that‘s always been enough to motivate him to do the bare minimum at least, it‘s never given him any feeling of happiness or even satisfaction.

But it‘s enough, despite the misery of it, because it‘s a harmless kind of misery - complaining about the workload and having to get up in the morning for classes and incomprehensibly convoluted papers written by ivory tower academics.

It‘s enough, because it gives him the illusion of productivity—more than an illusion, really, because he is being productive, he is. He‘s handing in his assignments on time, even if they‘re not done well, and he‘s planning out his essays and the final paper he needs to write before he can graduate. He collects a plethora of to-do-lists and post-it-notes on his desk, one for each class and another one for the bureaucracy required before his diploma will be handed out to him, and it‘s all so exhausting, but at least he doesn‘t need to think.

But then, at some point, it’s not enough because there‘s only so much he can do.  
He only has a few classes left to finish, and once he‘s on track, even ahead of all of his assignments, once he‘s worked through all the relevant chapters of his textbooks and all his paperwork is ready to be filled out and handed in once he gets his final grades, he‘s left in the lurch again.

Left with nothing to do that will distract him, again.

Faced with the terrifying possibility of having to think and—no.

In a moment of desperation—a late night, wide awake, with nervous energy buzzing close under his skin and the thoughts crowding in way too close for comfort—he throws some money that he doesn‘t really have at Blizzard and dusts off his old World of Warcraft account.

He just needs something to occupy these dark hours, these hours when the apartment is too silent and his head is too loud. When there‘s no Phichit in the living room and he‘s too exhausted to focus on classwork and too keyed up to sleep.

And this, finally, this, at least for the next thirty days, is a source of distraction that never dries up. It‘s there waiting for him at all times, whenever his mind starts coming alive with something that could become thought. Whenever he can feel the fog starting to lift, the veil threatening to tear—he‘s not ready for that. He can‘t—he can‘t face it.

He‘d rather keep running.

So that is how he occupies his time as days bleed into weeks and he loses track of how the winter slips away.

He buries himself in his classwork in the mornings.

He takes heavy, sluggish naps in the afternoon after staying up too late in the night.

He flees his room as soon as he’s awake, runs from the silence and the stale air and too many pairs of blue eyes watching from his walls.

He hangs out with Phichit in the evenings, letting whatever is his current Netflix fancy wash over him without taking any of it in.

He whiles away the nights in front of the screen until he‘s tired enough to drop into restless sleep.

He leaves the apartment only if it can‘t be helped, especially if it involves seeing other people.

He doesn‘t eat and can‘t find it in himself to care.

Most days at least he gets a decent dinner thanks to Phichit, but throughout the day he just can‘t be bothered to cook. It‘s only a few yards down the hall to the kitchen but it might as well be a mile-long hike.

Why bother? He‘s far enough removed from himself that he barely feels the hunger.

When his body does smack him upside the head with cravings—well, that‘s why he keeps snacks in his room.

He does walk to the store a few blocks down more often than he‘d like to admit, under the pretense of getting some fresh air. Then he gives in to every whim and craving that crosses his mind once he‘s there.

He buys shitty frozen pizza, Doritos and a bunch of brightly coloured, plastic-tasting dips, he buys overly sweetened grocery store sushi and fucking SpaghettiOs.

He even buys lactose-free chocolate ice cream and a handful of Butterfingers, even though the sweet stuff has never been his poison of choice—if you‘d give him a choice to kill himself slowly with either a packet of Mac & Cheese or a tub of Ben & Jerry‘s at a time, he‘d throw his money at Kraft any day of the week.

But really, anything that he doesn‘t have to cook is fine. Anything that doesn‘t take more than a couple of minutes of effort to prepare - really, Mac & Cheese is already pushing it; it takes too long, there‘s too much clean-up after.

The bag‘s heavy in his hand when he walks back to the flat, but he doesn‘t think about it.

 

* * *

 

One year has silently bled into the next.

He‘d let Phichit drag him to some club for New Year‘s Eve, but the evening had barely left an impression.

He’d only gone because Phichit had threatened to stay home with him if he didn‘t come, and he didn‘t want to be the reason Phichit was deprived of even more good things in his life.

(“If you‘re not going then I don‘t feel like going either“, Phichit had said, as if he didn‘t go out without Yuuri roughly twice a week. Yuuri had heard the unspoken _People who spend New Year‘s Eve alone end up dead_ hiding in between the lilt of his syllables. He wasn‘t sure if he was supposed to appreciate Phichit‘s worry or be offended that Phichit thought him so unstable.)

He‘d gone and been miserable.

He‘d had enough to drink that he could dance without thinking, but the only clear impressions that remained of that night were a swirling feeling of nausea and too many hands trying to touch him all the time when he really just wanted to lose himself in the music, the bass, the movement.

It hardly felt like a new beginning, hardly felt like anything at all.

January trickles away, unheeded.

A long string of days bleeding into one another, indistinguishable from one another to the point that Yuuri couldn‘t tell you what day of the week it was unless he thought long and hard about it.

Which he wouldn‘t, because thinking long and hard was exactly what he was trying not to do.

He goes about his days, and doesn’t do anything of import.

He hasn‘t made a decision about his next season—if there would even be a next season.

He hasn‘t decided what to do after he graduates.

He‘s been meaning to do laundry and take out the trash, maybe air out his room a little.

He brings the thought to the forefront of his mind every night before he drifts off to sleep.

_Tomorrow. Tomorrow I‘ll do it._

He wakes up lead-heavy and dipped in weariness and forgets all about it.

 

* * *

 

There‘s a paper plate of carrot cake, wrapped firmly in aluminium foil, sitting on his dresser, a gift from a classmate. He‘d wanted to eat it, but he kept forgetting, the plate not quite in his line of sight when he‘s at his desk or in bed, and now it‘s too late.

Now the time to eat it has passed, keeps drifting further and further into the past. He puts it at the back of his mind for a while, until a sickly sweet scent wafts into his nose every time he passes his dresser. He doesn‘t want to think about what he‘d see if he lifted the aluminium foil.

 

He should throw it out. He‘s been meaning to get around to it.

It‘s just a single movement. Pick up the plate, throw it in the trash.

 

He‘s been meaning to get around to it.

 

* * *

 

The first time a moment of clarity penetrates the thick fog around him, he‘s in the shower.

He has a class today, one with mandatory attendance, otherwise he wouldn‘t bother. He‘s thinking about—he doesn‘t know what he‘s thinking about, the topic for his essay in this class perhaps, he needs to decide on that soon, but they were idle thoughts, aimless, his eyes unfocused, as he lets the hot water run down his body, barely aware of the punching of water pressure on his shoulders.

He‘s not sure how long he‘s been standing there, hasn‘t even washed his hair yet, when his eyes suddenly snap into focus on the shower curtain, the simplistic red and yellow flower shapes crisp all of a sudden.

_I‘m spiralling_ , he thinks, completely unbidden, completely unrelated to anything, the thought suddenly crystallises at the forefront of his mind.

All his actions—and lack thereof—of the last weeks suddenly fall into place without having to think about it.

He‘s been sleeping, but too little and too late.  
He‘s been eating, but not well and not enough.  
He hasn‘t been moving. At all.

If it weren‘t for Phichit, he‘s pretty sure he wouldn’t even speak most days.  
When‘s the last time he‘s laughed, or even smiled? Thinking back over the last few days, not a single instant comes to mind.

But the realisation has no time to set in. He shivers, physically shakes it off— _don‘t think about that right now_ —and sinks back into the fog. All things considered, it lasted less than thirty seconds.

His eyes slip out of focus and he‘s back to only barely feeling the hot water pounding on his shoulders and distantly considering the books he needs to check out from the library when he‘s on campus today.

By the time he gets out of the shower, he has thoroughly dismissed the moment, pushed aside and buried under a landslide of distractions.

He goes to class and picks up books from the library.

 

* * *

 

It doesn‘t quite go away though.

Now that he knows, the realisation sits at the edge of his awareness, always, waiting to take him by surprise.

He doesn‘t let it.

Facing the fact that he‘s spiralling would mean having to do something about it. It would mean having to claw his way out of this hole by sheer force and that‘s way too exhausting a thing to even consider.

Much easier to just keep distracting himself, to keep letting his thoughts drift out of focus, all the while sinking deeper and deeper toward the bottom of this black lake.

How to find his way out is a problem for future Yuuri to consider.

Present Yuuri, in the meantime, prefers to act like there _is_ no problem.

It‘s so much easier to not skate and not dance, to not listen to music. So much easier to sleep at all hours of the day and spend the scant rest of them staring into space, unmoving, unthinking.

It‘s so much easier to opt out.

To drift off.

To fade.

So much easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW** : Dissociation, depression, disordered eating (as a symptom of depression more than an eating disorder in its own right).  
> (I might as well issue a blanket warning for dissociation for the next few chapters while Yuuri NOPEs out of his life for a while.)
> 
> Well. More than halfway into the story and we've finally reached the part that's quoted in the summary :D  
> Sorry friends. We've still got a few more chapters to go before we reach the low point of this fic so... buckle up.  
> And please take care of yourselves. We're getting into the nitty-gritty of depression here, and for me that's cathartic. But if it gets too heavy for you, there's absolutely no shame in removing yourself from this story. Your health comes first.
> 
> chapter title from [Heavy in Your Arms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_eOmvM-4zc) by Florence + the Machine (the one that started it all!):  
>  _And is it worth the wait_  
>  _All this killing time?_  
>  _Are you strong enough to stand_  
>  _Protecting both your heart and mine?_
> 
> **Next Time** : Yuuri tries hard to confront himself, but Phichit might just beat him to the punch.


	9. i need the clouds to cover me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooo boy, this one was painful. buckle up, friends.
> 
> thanks as always to my betas! [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/) 👍👍👍
> 
> CW in the end notes.

 

There‘s two options, he thinks one day in late January.

He‘s on his way home from class, veering slightly off his path in order to stop by a store on his way.

(He needs to buy food, he‘s aware. He needs to eat food.

The afternoon is already fading into early winter darkness but he hasn't eaten yet. There‘s nothing—Phichit keeps the kitchen pretty much fully stocked, but he‘s got nothing left. He ate the last of his potato chips sometime yesterday, and now he‘s got nothing left.

He feels perpetually light-headed, although he‘s aware of the pounds rapidly collecting around his stomach, clinging to his hips, his thighs.)

The headphones on his ears are playing something he isn't listening to, and he feels the unfamiliar strain of movement in his legs as he walks, and then he stops dead in a freezing Michigan winter breeze running cold fingers up his neck and whistling past his ears even through the bulky headphones.

He doesn't quite know how he got here.

He‘s aware that he had an afternoon class and that he bundled himself back up in his coat after, deciding to walk home from campus, with a detour to the store to buy something to eat. He knows that he pulled out his headphones and put on some playlist or another, and that he‘s passed piles of greying snow every once in a while, but for the most part the sidewalks were cleared and dry.

He knows all that, but he still doesn't quite know how he got here.

He‘s stopped dead on the sidewalk and he can‘t quite recall any of the motivations that brought him here, nor any of the thoughts that went through his mind in the last thirty minutes—if there were any at all.

It‘s once more as if he‘s stepped out of a fog he didn't realise he was in, taking in his surroundings for the first time. It‘s like getting a new prescription for his glasses and realising that he forgot what it feels like to see clearly.

 _How did it get like this?_ , he wonders.

_When will it stop?_

There‘s a sudden clenching in his chest, like there‘s a tangle of yarn in his lungs and someone‘s buried their fingers in it and pulls.

 _What are you doing?_ , something whispers, and it‘s sitting right at the juncture of his head and the back of his neck, _You‘re wasting your time. What are you doing? Where have you gone?_

He‘s thankful that there‘s no one around in the cold January dusk because all of a sudden there‘s tears in his eyes and _oh_ , he hasn't cried since back in that hotel room in Sochi.

There‘s two options, he thinks, with a strange clarity that feels like it‘s not coming out of his own mind at all. He either snaps out of this—whatever this is—, or he keeps spiralling until he hits rock bottom. These are the only two options there are.

He doesn't feel like he has a choice in which one it‘ll be. He can only wait, and watch, and see what happens.

He is no longer a participant in his own life.

He watches from the sidelines.

He takes a step forward, keeps walking, and tries violently to hold on to that something, that voice sitting at the juncture of his head and the back of his neck, that single spot of clarity.

But the repetitive motion and the bland streets and the music that he barely hears make it so easy to lose sight of it. To let his new prescription glasses slide down his nose, fall away, forgotten.

He slips back into the fog and chooses not to see.

 

* * *

 

It‘s dark by the time he gets home that day (or is it another day? It might be the next week, he‘s not entirely sure how he‘s passed the time in between, where it has trickled away to), and Phichit is waiting in a flat that is warm and brightly lit and makes Yuuri's glasses fog up when he steps inside.

Well, he‘s not waiting, exactly. Not specifically waiting for Yuuri to come home—he‘s busy flitting through the kitchen, cooking dinner, soft music filling the narrow walls with sound.

In between stirring and chopping he‘s scrolling on his phone whenever there‘s an idle moment in between tasks.

But he looks up when Yuuri unlocks the door, looks up from the kitchen island across the open living room to where Yuuri is standing in the entrance, with a warm smile as if he’s been expecting him.

He answers Yuuri's automatic _tadaima_ with a chipper _okaeri_ as Yuuri slips out of his shoes.

The flat is filled with the enticing scent of spices, garlic and coriander.

Yuuri, having scarfed down a packaged tuna salad sandwich on his way home, feels queasy and heavy and like the fat is leaking from every pore of his skin, but still the aroma makes him salivate instantly.

He‘s quietly thankful that his purchases are safely tucked away in his backpack, not in a plastic bag for Phichit to scrutinise with judging eyes.

He‘s even more thankful that the only item that needs to be put into the fridge and thereby exposed to Phichit's curious gaze is a packet of American cheese—not exactly ideal, but inconspicuous enough.

“Have you eaten?“, Phichit asks, when Yuuri comes into the kitchen, cheese in hand, backpack abandoned by the hallway that leads to their rooms, and then goes on without waiting for an answer, “I made Gaeng Jued, do you want any? I was gonna keep watching American Horror Story, unless you got any other ideas?“

Yuuri makes a non-committal noise as he stores his cheese in the fridge, then he tugs a fresh bottle of water from the pantry because Phichit likes to keep his water refrigerated even in the dead of winter, and takes a long draught, hovering uncertainly at the divide between kitchen island and living room while Phichit flits between his pots and the cutting board.

His tongue lies heavy in his mouth like a sodden rag and the incessant energy of Phichit's movements feels like an animal snapping at his heels, though if it‘s nudging him toward the warmth of the hearth or chasing him into the empty darkness that is his room, he‘s not sure yet.

“We don‘t have to watch anything, either“, Phichit is saying when no suggestions are forthcoming, “we could just hang out. Talk.“

Yuuri just shrugs, and then, when he realises that‘s not enough, he adds, “American Horror Story sounds fine.“

Phichit flicks a gaze at him and changes lanes instantly.

“You wanna help me chop these mushrooms?“

Yuuri shrugs again, but he grabs the knife next to the cutting board and quietly sets to work.

Phichit waits until he’s three and a half mushrooms in, before he asks, “So what did you do today?“, and Yuuri is halfway through an account of his afternoon class before he even realises he’s opened his mouth.

Phichit is good.

He knows exactly that Yuuri needs something to occupy his hands and mind just enough for the words to fall easily from his lips.

Yuuri doesn't really mind it, though—he lets the conversation flow easily enough between them, until Phichit says, casually, while he‘s draining the rice noodles, “I've made good progress on my quad toe, too, you‘d be surprised! Hey, you've got no morning classes tomorrow, right? You could come to the rink and I can show you!“

Yuuri focuses his gaze downwards, at the mushrooms staining his fingertips a dull brown.  
He‘s read somewhere that it only takes the same pressure as cutting through a carrot, chopping off a finger.

“Maybe“, he says, “I still have all that reading for my afternoon class.“

“Oh. Of course.“

The disappointment in Phichit's voice crackles on Yuuri's skull like hailstones, cold and forceful at once. Yuuri draws his shoulders up against them.

He feels more than sees Phichit abandon the colander of noodles in the sink and turn to carefully scan the back of Yuuri's head. Yuuri's eyes are counting the gills of the mushroom under his fingers, smudging into one another as if drawn in a rough brush.

“Do you—Will you—Are you okay, Yuuri?“

Yuuri's breath rushes out of his lungs in a huff that sounds pitiful even to his own ears.

“Yeah, no, I‘m good. Just a long day, you know? Sorry I‘m not...“

All energy drains from him halfway through the sentence even as he‘s still trying to decide how to end it. ( _Very social right now. Very talkative. Good company. A good roommate. A good friend. Better. More than this. Anything at all._ ) His mouth feels suddenly slack, numb. Unable to form the syllables that don‘t even begin to cut it.

Phichit brushes past his silence.

“Come on, Yuuri, I mean—not just today. How have you been doing? I—Do you need anything?“

Yuuri's fingers scramble to grab more mushrooms from the plastic container and he takes his time brushing them off, shifts his knife from one hand to the other, unnecessarily wipes his fingers on a towel, stalling for time, looking for any answer at all that isn't patently false or disgustingly honest.

His breathy laugh when he finally forces it out makes him want to throw up.

“No, no, I’m—You know, it‘s been a bit crappy lately, but—I‘m alright. I‘ll be fine. Just a bit—mh, all just a bit exhausting. I don‘t—“

Once again the pause draws on for too long, too long, as Yuuri searches for any words that will not get stuck in his throat in a hot, sticky lump of shame. He still feels Phichit's gaze prickling at his neck.

Yuuri is frozen, unmoving, like an old hard drive, outdated processors clicking piteously, trying to grab at data that is just at his fingertips. _Finish the sentence. Say words. Any fucking thing._

Eventually Phichit seems to decide that the rest of the sentence is not forthcoming, and he continues.

“Well, it‘s just that it‘s not much longer until Four Continents and then I‘ll be heading out to Taipei for a week....“

Yuuri throws a quick smile over his shoulder, not letting his gaze wander anywhere close to the vicinity of Phichit's eyes.

“That‘s true. Are you excited? Do you think you‘re ready?“

“Yuuri, that‘s not...“, Phichit sighs deeply, but Yuuri feels the relief of pressure like the physical opening of a valve when Phichit finally turns back to his noodles.

“Just promise me you‘ll eat, okay?“, his words, now small, almost drowning in the sink, “And call me. If you—If you need... just call me.“

“I will. I‘ll be cheering you on from here. You‘ll do great“, Yuuri says, but the knowledge that he‘s trying to have a different conversation than Phichit tastes stale on his tongue.

A heavy weight still in his throat, he drops the last of the sliced mushrooms into a bowl and cleans up the waste.

Wiping his hands once more, he lets his eyes glide over the food on the counter and the stove, finally settling somewhere around Phichit's left earlobe.

“Did you need anything else?“

If Phichit winces, Yuuri tells himself, it‘s only from the heat of the pot.

“No. No, I‘m good“, he says, and if Phichit's voice is a little higher than usual, Yuuri tells himself, it‘s only so that Yuuri can hear him over the music.

“Alright then. I‘ll be...“, Yuuri says and makes a vague motion in the direction of his room.

Phichit nods a few times too many, and doesn't turn around.

“Good night, Yuuri.“

 

* * *

 

Yuuri's skin is burning all over as soon as the door closes behind him, like he‘s swallowed something corrosive and now it‘s eating its way outward from his throat, burning holes into him.

It crowds him back against the door, tries to push him past, through, back to Phichit, anything to not just leave it like that.

Anything to dispel that painful disappointment in Phichit's voice, that tone, chipper to hide that it‘s chipped.

But the words are still refusing to come, refusing to push past that wall, every single one of Yuuri's instincts still insisting on acting like he‘s fine; if not before himself then at least before others.

It makes no sense whatsoever—he knows that Phichit knows he‘s everything but fine, and there‘s no sense in hiding it from him.

But Yuuri also knows that Phichit has no idea just how ugly everything in Yuuri's head is, just how rotten and broken, and as long as he keeps his mouth shut, Phichit will only be able to make assumptions, and they can only ever fall short of the truth.

Yuuri tries to swallow past the lump in his throat, tries to breathe.

Phichit deserves better than this.

Yuuri is not one of the things that Phichit deserves to have happen to him.

His hands scrabble for purchase, for anything tangible, and they find the rough texture of wood under his skin—but already it slips away, fades under the noise in his mind.

They find coarse folds and seams of denim next and they clench, but all it does is make his hands numb and it‘s still too quiet to combat the noise.

Then there‘s skin and soft hair and fingernails and there‘s pain, and he grabs hold of it with both hands and his whole mind, that sharp sensation stinging into his body and finally, finally the noise goes muted, like someone has turned a dial.

Yuuri doesn't let go of it even as he sinks to the floor right there by the door, burying his face in his knees.

He hasn't even turned on the light, but his skin still prickles under the weight of too many eyes scrutinising him, pricking into his skin, prying. He knows they‘re there, knows them too well, even if he can‘t see them. Blue eyes, judging.

There‘s nowhere for him to turn. All eyes find him wanting and he knows, he _wants_ so desperately.

 

He doesn't move until he hears soft footsteps disappearing into Phichit's room hours later, until the strip of light trickling into his room from underneath the door fades.

Only then does he pry his fingers loose, the blood underneath the fingernails now dried, caked and dark. 

Pausing only to pick up his phone and an extra blanket, he steps back into the hallway.

 

The couch in the living room isn't particularly comfortable, but at least the only eyes watching him here are on the blank canvas of his own mind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW** : Dissociation, depression, disordered eating (as a symptom of depression rather than an eating disorder in its own right), depiction of a panic attack, self harm
> 
> Chapter title from [Long and Lost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJILX4srC0g) by Florence + the Machine:  
>  _I need the clouds to cover me._  
>  _Pull in the dark, surround me._  
>  _Without your love I'll be_  
>  _So long and lost, are you missing me?_
> 
> _It's been so long between the words we spoke._  
>  _Will you be there up on the shore, I hope?_
> 
>  
> 
>  **Next Time:** Do you think we can make it any worse? Let's see if we can make it any worse.


	10. i was dead when i woke up this morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betas. They are good. Specifically these: [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/).
> 
> I have no words except for these right now, friends. Have them.
> 
>  **CW** in the end notes.

 

He jolts awake late in the morning, the flat still and empty.

He‘d drifted in and out of sleep earlier, while Phichit was moving around the place, getting ready for practice. He‘s got 4CC coming up, and diligently leaves the flat for the rink at 7:10 every morning. 

As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, Yuuri sunk back into darkness, until he wakes hours later in a haze of cold sweat, his chest aching with heartbeats like gunfire, rapid and heavy, tearing into flesh.

He‘s drowned, this time.

Over and over, sinking deeper, faster, a brazen body, going under.

Each time he thought he‘d taken his last breath, shuddering, awareness fading into the distance, limbs going slack—this being a dream, he found himself still alive, still conscious—but still underwater, lungs filling with fluid, breathing and unable to breathe at the same time.

 

He lies still for a long time, staring at the gooseflesh texture of the ceiling above him, waiting for his heartbeats to subside.

He‘s barely surprised—these dreams have always come to him in times of particular distress. 

In the run-up to competitions, when he was fighting with Yuuko, after first coming to the US.  
Dreams of death, each more excruciating than the last, a different one every night, usually in mounting scales of catastrophe.

He‘s been run over by trucks, has fallen off cliffs, has been shot and stabbed, has drowned and burned alive. He‘s lost count of the number of times he‘s witnessed the nuclear apocalypse, the Yellowstone eruption, the inevitable expansion of the sun, in his sleep. 

He‘s felt the flesh melt off his face, has seen Detroit and Hasetsu devoured by searing heat and radiation.

It leaves him drained in the morning, keyed up, relieved and disappointed all at once.

He can say for sure that it‘s not true, the old adage that you die in real life when you die in your dreams. It would've saved him so much humiliation in his life if it were true. 

His mind is not as kind as that.

(For the same reason he’s never understood why people bother pinching themselves to see if they are dreaming—there‘s plenty of pain in his dreams.)

These dreams stick to him with clammy tendrils all throughout the day.  
They creep up his spine as he makes tea, wrap around his throat as he sits at his desk, trip him up on his way to the bathroom. 

They‘re not—he‘s not really scared of them. They‘re not nightmares, in that sense. 

They‘re unpleasant in their visceral graphics, and exhausting, like his body really underwent the physical strain of fighting for his life. 

They affect him emotionally, too, especially the more apocalyptic ones: watching whole hosts of people, both familiar and strange, being torn apart by something violent, jarring. It leaves him shaken, trembling in the morning.

But most of all, the dreams make him feel out of place, make him feel removed from this plane of existence in a way nothing else does.

He‘s anchored, by way of his stubborn body, his stubborn heart that refuses to cease beating, to the mundanity of bed, desk, bathroom.

He was supposed to have died, died, died—so why is he still here?

The ceiling withstands his gaze easily for a long while and in the end it‘s Yuuri who looks away first.

Automatically, his hand reaches out for his phone, eyes unseeing he checks and clears the messages that have accumulated over night.

He flips around various apps for a while, but nothing holds his attention for long. He clicks the screen off and rests the phone against his chest, eyes finding the ceiling once more, heaviness still weighing down his limbs. 

His eyes may have drifted shut a few more times, thoughts clouded. Hazy. 

His mind separate from the reality of his sheets, his mattress, his limbs, a disconnect, like a short circuit. An absent mind.

He is all body, all limbs and bone-heavy tiredness. He is only the stubborn beating of his heart, the uncontrolled expansion and deflation of two lungs, wings flapping, unable to get off the ground. All air, moving through his bowels like sludge, a density, a rockslide.

He is all mind, all consciousness, all being, divorced from his physical reality, a wandering of electrical impulses in a void. Less than that—nothing electric about it, nothing as bound by laws as that.

He is not a brain, not synapses and neurons; he is drifting, cut loose in a raincloud, nothing more than a droplet, crystallised, impossibly cold, crisp and at the same time indistinct, seamless, lost.

 

* * *

 

By the time he next comes back to himself his back hurts, cramped from the long immobility. 

His phone is still cradled against his chest in cold fingertips. 

A brush of his thumb against the button tells him it‘s past noon.

By sheer force of will he moves, rolls over onto his side in order to give his back some reprieve. 

Eyes unblinking, unfeeling and numb, meet blue ones that are the same, and Yuuri winces bodily.  
Screws his eyes shut and slaps his hands instinctively in front of his face, the edge of his phone case, forgotten for a second, scratching painfully along his forehead.

He shrinks in on himself, his whole body curling until his face rests against his knees, his nose buried in pyjama pants too musky, too sweaty.

He still feels those eyes prickling on his neck, boring holes into his scalp, searing his hair.

He groans low in his throat, a wounded noise, and pries his white-knuckled fingers away from his phone forcibly, shifts them into his hair, tugging hard.

It‘s no use.

All of a sudden, he can no longer stay still, cannot for a second longer remain there, exposed to the scrutiny of Victor‘s gaze over and over and over and over and over.

It doesn't matter that his own eyes are firmly closed, he still sees clear as day Victor‘s cold gaze assessing him and finding him wanting. Scrutinising and not recognising. Seeing and not seeing.

He stumbles out of bed, hasty, barely registers the movement before it runs through his body. Grabs his glasses with one hand and bursts through the door into the hallway or else he feels he may be sick. 

 

* * *

 

It‘s not until he‘s sitting on the couch in the living room with a cup of tea steaming before him (Darjeeling today) that he realises he‘s left behind both his phone and his computer in his room. 

He cannot possibly go back for them. They are left behind, MIA, presumed dead.

He gives them up, lets them go. He can‘t go back for them—he cannot.

He stares at the cushion on the other end of the sofa instead, tracing the stripey pattern with his eyes, slowly pulling the skin from his lower lip with his teeth.

He tries to erase the image of a piercing gaze framed in light from his mind, shuts his eyes tight against it, but the colours only bloom more vividly behind his eyelids.

Memories of Sochi flood to the forefront of his mind, even as he presses the heels of his thumbs to his temples, hard, trying to stave them off. Memories of Victor‘s words, his movements, of _watching Victor on the ice and feeling nothing_.

 _Don‘t. Don‘t—don‘t_ , he thinks desperately, _don‘t let them in. Put them back. Put them back!_

The slap of skin on skin is loud in the empty room, though Yuuri barely feels it on his cheek. Another and another and finally the sting of pain brings him back to himself enough that he can crowd the thoughts to the back of his mind. He visualises physically locking them away, and the static in his ears subsides slightly.

His breathing is fraying.

 _Idiot child_ , his mind supplies, _don‘t think_.

His hand reaches out to his mug automatically, and he takes a long draught of liquid that scalds his tongue and throat, but the solid heat of the mug in his fingers is an anchor.

He runs his fingernails over the ridges that carve a pattern into the curved surface of the mug again and again and again, concentrating on the alternating sensations of smooth and rough, smooth and rough, on the delicate humming noises his nails create on the ceramic.

His breathing is evening out.

He stares into the gentle amber liquid, angling it carefully so that he doesn't see his reflection in its surface.

 _You don‘t have to live like this_ , the voice at the back of his neck feeds into his nervous system.

Yuuri‘s head snaps up.

Eyes wide, he turns the words over and over in his mind, tastes them on his tongue, feels their shape rattling against his teeth.

 _It‘s time_.

With a single movement both gentle and decisive he sets his mug down, then folds himself off the couch.

He‘s buzzing the few steps down the hall toward his room.

He stares at the wood grain of the door for a long time, feeling the calm settle over him along with the realisation.

 _It‘s time_.

By the time he opens the door, his hands are steady. As steady as he‘s ever seen them.

 

* * *

 

Here are the things that he knows—knows deep in his bones to be true. The facts that have slowly gathered over the course of weeks, there in that itching spot at the back of his head. They are few, but they are the only things solid, the only certainties of a life in the lurch. They are these:

 

He is nothing but a spectator in his life right now, thrown around like a leaf in a flurry of wind, and there‘s no solid ground. He‘s put himself on the sidelines.

He‘s spiralling, ever downward, ever sinking, ever heavy, no moment of rest.

He is going to hit rock bottom eventually. Eventually, there is going to be no further to sink and he can start building himself back up, but he has no idea what all this is going to do to him until he gets there.

And this:

It‘s time. It‘s time for him to give this up. It‘s time for him to release this spectre that has been haunting him for the last week, the last month, the last twelve years. There are enough ghosts in his head, enough monsters tucked into the crevices of his mind. He doesn't need another one on the walls of his bedroom, dictating his every move, his every decision.

He needs to find his own way. Even if that way leads him to the bottom of the ocean.

 

Here‘s what he knows:

This is the next step he‘s going to take.

 

Here‘s what he doesn't know:

If this is a step forward, or rather a step back.

 

* * *

 

When Phichit comes home for lunch and catches him folding up all his Victor Nikiforov posters, Yuuri does not have the words to explain.

He cannot even begin to vocalise the thought processes that have led him here. 

Things are still tense between them, are always tense these days, and Yuuri knows that it‘s because of his silences, but he just doesn't have the words.

“I just feel like it‘s time to take them down“, is all he knows how to say.  
And: “It just seems presumptuous.“

Presumptuous feels like the right word in the moment, but as soon as he says it he knows it won‘t mean anything to Phichit. But he cannot explain; what he feels he‘s been presuming he doesn't know.

 

By the time Phichit has left and his dresser drawer has been firmly shut on all his posters, photos and articles, his hands are still steady.

The rest of his tea has gone cold in the living room.

He drinks it down anyway, in a long gulp, untasting, and makes a new one (Gunpowder, this time).

Then he returns to his room, closing the door behind him.

The room is blessedly silent, and so is his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW** : depression, dissociation, graphic depiction of nightmares (drowning, nuclear explosion), mild self-harm
> 
> Chapter title from [Seven Devils](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJL5SE1i0u4) by Florence + the Machine:  
>  _Seven devils all around you_  
>  _Seven devils in your house_  
>  _See I was dead when I woke up this morning_  
>  _And I'll be dead before the day is done._
> 
>  **Next Time:** Phichit leaves for 4CC. Yuuri stays behind.


	11. how deeply are you sleeping or are you still awake - pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... this chapter got kinda long and I decided to split it into two. I have upped the total chapter count accordingly. I want to do this part right, and therefore I didn't want to rush it.  
> I've had a very busy week, and when this chapter kept getting longer, I decided it was better to split it and take my time rather than rush through to the end so I can post it all today. I hope you guys don't mind too much.
> 
> As a related note, this chapter is not betaread because I only finished it today and there wasn't time. So there might be some more mistakes than usual, but I hope that there aren't any big blunders. Feel free to point them out if you notice anything, and please keep in mind that English is not my native language.
> 
> **CW** as always at the end of the chapter, and please heed them if you are worried about such things! I love all of you guys and I don't want to see you hurt! 🖤

 

The night before Phichit leaves for Taipei, Yuuri cooks.

There’s plenty of fresh ingredients in the fridge and in the pantry, so he doesn’t even have to leave the house. When Phichit comes home after the last of his off-ice conditioning, Yuuri’s prepared _oyakodon_ with brown rice and _wakame_ salad, and there’s even a low-fat vegan chocolate mousse chilling in the fridge.

Yuuri greets Phichit with a smile—it’s not exuberant, but it’s genuine.

To be fair, it’s probably too early for dinner, but he wanted to surprise Phichit, and they can take their time.

“ _Ta... tadaima_ “, Phichit says, and he looks a little stunned as he drops his gym bag by the door.

“ _Okaeri_ , Peach. Have you eaten?“, Yuuri replies, as he spoons brown rice into two bowls.

“Yuuri...“, Phichit sounds half suspicious and half delighted as he slips off his shoes and steps closer, “what is all this?“

“I made dinner“, Yuuri explains, as if it wasn’t obvious, “after all you need to save your energy for the competition. So just sit back and let me take care of everything tonight.“

“Yuuri“, Phichit says again, his smile still a little shaky, “you didn’t have to.“

Yuuri looks up from his task to meet Phichit’s gaze.

“I know I didn’t have to“, he says, “but I wanted to. You deserve it.“

This—this is easy: it’s easy to smile and find kind words to say, it was easy to carry himself to the kitchen even and prepare a three course meal; it was so, so easy, because it’s true.

Phichit deserves it, deserves all of it and more. Regardless of Yuuri’s own feelings, regardless of the many tense silences between them lately, regardless of what he needed to bargain with himself in order to be able to do this: he will not let Phichit leave for Taipei tense and worried for him.

It is one thing for his mental state to affect his own career; for it to affect Phichit’s is unacceptable.

Yuuri will not be the reason Phichit is deprived of even more good things in his life.

That’s why it’s easy to smile at Phichit in a way that doesn’t feel half-hearted, in a way that comes readily with his words.

And yet it feels so selfish, yet the bad conscience throbs in his temples, because while all of this is true, it is also true that he is doing it to placate Phichit, to put up a front of being a functional person, so that Phichit will leave for Taipei without feeling the need to arrange for a babysitter for Yuuri.

He loves Phichit, loves him dearly, but part of him can’t wait for the door to close behind him the next morning, leaving Yuuri with six glorious days alone, not having to speak to or see anyone.  
Not having to pretend that he is any better than he is.

Six days of self-imposed isolation that Yuuri is craving like a drug.

But for that to happen he needs to convince Phichit tonight that he is okay to be left alone.

The deception of it tastes bitter on his chewed-up lips, like old paint and turpentine.

But he smiles and it comes so easy.

Nothing is easier than wanting to see Phichit happy.

Phichit, fingers still a little stiff from the cold outside, grabs a chilled bottle of water from the fridge and drinks in long draughts, and Yuuri shakes his head fondly.

If it is for Phichit, he can do it.

“Dinner is ready in ten, it’s your choice of movie tonight“, he says, “so you wanna go and get _The King and the Skater_?“

“Yuuri“, Phichit’s smile is just a little wry, “It’s always my choice of movie these days. But it’s pre-competition so, yes, naturally, I will be getting _The King and the Skater_.“

 

They eat and they watch _The King and the Skater_ and they chat easily, bowls of chocolate mousse in their hands, about 4CC and Phichit’s toughest competition, about Taiwanese food and Taipei nightlife. 

Phichit, bless him, is easy on him and doesn’t bring up Yuuri’s own skating even once—he lets Yuuri guide the conversation subtly away from difficult topics, consciously or not, and he accepts all of Yuuri’s encouragement with poise, as a matter of course.

Yuuri dutifully shoos him to bed at a reasonable hour and just as dutifully wakes up with him at an ungodly hour in order to see him off.

(Or rather he lets Phichit believe he wakes up with him; truth is he didn’t sleep. He intended to, really, he did, but after an evening of laughter and easy conversation his room buzzes with quiet in his ears, swirls thoughts around his mind about how he should be going with Phichit in the morning, and so he buried himself in Reddit, hoping and waiting and waiting and hoping for sleep to come until he can hear the buzz of Phichit’s alarm going off in the next room, at which point he shuts off his computer and goes into the kitchen to make tea.)

He then sits on the armrest of the sofa, listless, turning his tea cup slowly in his hands, while Phichit’s gradually goes cold as Phichit stumbles through the apartment, collecting his various effects.

They hug when Celestino arrives with the cab downstairs, clinging to each other in a way that is trying hard not to be desperate. 

“I’ll watch you“, Yuuri promises.  
“Call me if you need anything at all“, Phichit demands.

They both choose to believe that it’s true.

Yuuri is quietly grateful that Celestino is not coming up to collect Phichit—it means that Yuuri does not have to face him right now. 

There are a few more whispered assurances—varying degrees of meaninglessness.  
Phichit grabs his suitcase and the door clicks shut behind him.

For a moment there’s the sound of his footsteps, receding, the fading rumble of the suitcase’s wheels.

Then nothing.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri was planning on going straight to sleep after Phichit leaves, after another night spent by the light of a screen. He’s bone tired, but he’s also wide awake, slapped into wakefulness by the silence of the apartment, by the prospect of its silence for days to come.

This is what he wanted. Right?

He doesn’t even bother to lie down—he already knows he wouldn’t be able to get a wink of sleep. Not now.

Maybe later, in the afternoon, when the sluggishness overtakes him, overwhelms his trembling listlessness into submission. For now, he’s awake.

He finishes his tea, and then Phichit’s, lukewarm and still nearly full, with one spoonful of sugar that tastes sticky on his tongue after his own unsweetened one.

He puts Phichit’s empty cup by the sink, refills his own (Genmaicha—a bittersweet celebration of his glorious time alone).

He sits on the couch—he doesn’t need to hide in his room now. No one will bother him out here.

No one will bother him out here.

 

* * *

 

At some point he figures he should probably do something.

Watch something. Watching something seems manageable. It doesn’t require him getting up.  
He just needs to turn on the TV and flip through Netflix for something to watch.

He clicks through his and Phichit’s list. There’s nothing.

He clicks through their recommendations. There’s nothing.

He clicks through the Drama tag. There’s nothing.

He googles a list of the saddest Netflix films, but they all seem trite and also disgustingly heteronormative.

He flips through his mental catalogue of things he would watch when he needs a good cry, but it gets him nowhere and he is unsurprised. This isn’t what he needs—he doesn’t think he could cry if he tried.

This isn’t his emotions sitting right there at the surface, just needing an excuse to spill over.  
This is quite the opposite—his emotions are buried, deep, right down there at the bottom of the black lake.

He needs something to forcibly tear them free, drag them bodily back to light. 

He needs...  
He needs a disaster. He needs a nuclear apocalypse. He needs a rock bottom.

But the ground isn’t tearing itself open underneath him. The building isn’t crumbling under the force of a nuclear blast washing over the city. The flat and the living room and the couch and he remain intact.

He sits.

 

* * *

 

In the end, he flips over from Netflix to Prime Video and clicks through his list until he finds _One Mississippi_.

He watches without seeing.

By the end of season one, he still won’t feel.

 

* * *

 

By the end of season two, the sun has set.

Prime asks him what he wants to watch next until the screen shuts off from inactivity.

He is left in darkness.

 

* * *

 

If he died now, no one would even know until Phichit comes back on Monday. If he slipped in the shower and bashed his head open, Phichit wouldn’t even be able to get to him.

He imagines a panicked Phichit knocking on the bathroom door, pleading with him to open, already fearing the worst. He imagines him finally breaking open the lock by some feat of desperation, and tearfully kneeling over his bleeding body. 

It’s not working.

He replaces the bathroom in this flat with the one at Yu-topia, replaces Phichit with his sister, then his mother. Imagines how they would grab him, shake him, beg him to come back. He still doesn’t feel anything.

 

He tries to think bigger. 

He’s on his way home, and his flight—no, better: He’s on his way to a competition, and his flight disappears off the map—somewhere over the Pacific something goes wrong, a turbulence, a storm maybe, no one knows exactly. Just that his flight never made it, and his family, his friends are waiting for any news, losing hope with every passing minute. It’s all over the news and at the competition—... No. No one would care. Not if it was just him. The competition would go on without him, and maybe there would be some sort of official statement, but no one would _care_ , not about him. 

Now, if he was Victor...

If he was Victor...

No, not even in his fantasies can he hurt Victor, put him in danger, take him from the world. There’s a wrongness to it, like defiling something sacred.

He tries to imagine Victor at the competition—it’s a Grand Prix qualifier, maybe—hearing the news that the skater from Japan won’t make it—that he is, most likely, somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific.

Would he care? 

He would be sympathetic, for sure—Yuuri has to give him as much credit as that. Victor is kind, he knows that. Maybe he would even be sad, in a general sort of way— _such a tragedy, so young, and all those people..._ —but would it make any difference in his life? Would he ever think about again, once he’s got another gold medal around his neck and is safely back home in St. Petersburg? Would he notice the absence of Yuuri’s name from his next events? Would he think of Yuuri with a shiver whenever he was about to board another flight halfway across the world?

He tries to imagine it, tries to picture Victor as his thoughts keep drifting back to the Japanese skater he never even talked to, but whose absence is suddenly felt like a tangible hole at every competition. He imagines Victor looking up his routines that he will now never see in person, talking to Phichit to try and find out more about him...

A huffed laugh escapes from Yuuri’s lips, harsh and sudden in the quiet of the apartment.  
No. Not even in his own imagination can Yuuri convince himself that Victor would ever pay that kind of attention to him, dead or alive. No—Victor wouldn’t miss him. Why would he?

What is there to miss?

 

Would anyone?

Would anyone other than Phichit take notice of his absence?

Are they taking notice this weekend at Four Continents?

He hasn’t failed to make it to 4CC since his second year in seniors. But even then he’s never amounted to anything there. He’s never made gold.

Will it make any difference to anyone that he isn’t there this year?

From how the season’s been going, most likely Bin, Leroy and Altin will dominate the podium between them, unless Phichit manages to mix it up for them.

If Yuuri disappears now—from the competitive scene, from life—has he made a difference to anyone in his life?

Would he be remembered at all? Or would he just quietly slip into oblivion, never to be talked of again?

He can’t make up his mind if that thought is disturbing or oddly comforting. He could disappear from living memory as if his whole failed existence never was in the first place.

He could erase himself.

Unmake himself. 

Unravel.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW** : dissociation, depression, suicidal ideation (of sorts: he doesn't really think about hurting himself, but he contemplates rather extensively what would happen if he died [by accident])
> 
> I also want to apologise for leaving the chapter at such a note, that was not my intention at all. But this was the only place where it made sense to split the chapter. For those of you worried, remember that this is tagged as both canon compliant and hopeful ending and that is still true.
> 
> Chapter Title from [Sky full of Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1TSiB9OuVM) by Florence + the Machine:  
>  _How deeply are you sleeping or are you still awake?_  
>  _A good friend told me you've been staying out so late_  
>  _Be careful, oh, my darling, oh, be careful what it takes_  
>  _From what I've seen so far, the good ones always seem to break_
> 
> **Next Time** : Home Alone - Yuuri Edition, pt. 2


	12. the heart, it hides such unimaginable things - pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it finally is, after a long week of waiting! And it's long, too, so: enjoy!
> 
> Thanks a million to the best betas, [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/).
> 
>  **CW** in the end notes!!!

 

The sound of sirens outside the building jostles him out of his thoughts.

It rushes past and away, not even slowing down, but the sound of them is jarring, driving Yuuri back into himself of a sudden.

He blinks sluggishly, looking around.

He’s still on the sofa in the living room, though he has slumped out of his sitting position into a slouch, half draped against the armrest.

He blinks again, once, twice. His eyes are dry and itchy. His head is throbbing in pain.

Dull light trickles in through the window, but in the February haziness it is impossible to tell the time.

His hands reach around him, patting the cushions, until he finds his phone tucked into a crevice. He clicks it on. Nothing happens. He tries again. It’s dead.

“Shit“, he says, softly.

How long has he been sitting here? Phichit was going to check in once he got to Taipei, did he—?

Yuuri tries to think back, tries to remember receiving such a message. The last thing he remembers clearly is the TV shutting off after he finished watching _One Mississippi_.

He unfolds his legs to get off the couch and stumbles almost immediately as the light-headedness makes the room around him spin. He bumps both his knees hard into the coffee table, and then his thigh against the couch as he overbalances.

It’s going to bruise, but the pain shoves him a little more back into himself.

He goes to his room in search of his phone charger and plugs it in. He finds a bottle of water and takes a long drink—his mouth is dry and tacky and tastes revolting. His phone, once it turns on, tells him it’s 10:22 a.m., Thursday, and then silently screams at him as all his message notifications and missed calls roll in.

“Fuck“, he says, this time with more emphasis.

He sits down slowly on the bed, because he feels his knees might give out on him.

Well, the good news is he hasn’t missed Phichit‘s short program.

And that’s where the good news ends.

He doesn’t know exactly when his phone’s battery ran out, but chances are he’s gone dark on Phichit for at least twelve hours. Most likely longer.

And that’s not just not replying to messages and ignoring calls. That’s messages not being delivered and calls going straight to voicemail. Phichit is going to be livid—once Yuuri lets him know there’s no need to be worried.

For a split second, he considers to just... not. But Phichit will realise soon that his messages are finally being received, and if Yuuri continues to ignore him after, there will be no coming back from that.

He composes a quick text— _Sorry Peach, i fell asleep on the couch. Didn’t realize my battery ran out until i woke up. Glad you made it there safe._ —and then goes back and replies to all the little tidbits and pictures about the flight, the hotel, the other skaters and whatever else he found worthy of being shared with Yuuri.

He carefully ignores the texts that rolled in after Yuuri’s phone died and that had grown increasingly frantic in tone. Judging by the timestamps it was out for almost sixteen hours, and Yuuri is frankly surprised that he doesn’t have one of Phichit‘s friends banging on his door yet.

A sudden cold feeling clenches his gut and he abandons his phone for a moment to check on the hamsters in Phichit‘s room.

He’s relieved to find they still have plenty of food and water, but he tops them up nonetheless and his guilty conscience even impels him to go into the kitchen and slice up some fresh apple for them.

He’s watching Akira noisily nibble on a piece of apple with a sort of clinical detachment. Some distant part of him is aware that it’s entirely adorable, but it doesn’t really get through to him. Another part is aware that if things had gone differently, he could have done serious harm to the tiny animals with his negligence. That, too, doesn’t really register, but there’s a pang of pain when he realises that Phichit still trusts him with these small living beings that he loves, regardless of how utterly unreliable Yuuri has proven himself to be in the last weeks.

This has him retrieve his phone briefly in order to snap a picture of Akira stuffing his furry little face and send it to Phichit.

And then, as he watches the last of the apple skin disappear into a rounded cheek, there’s a part of him that is aware that he himself hasn’t had anything to eat since his send-off dinner for Phichit. He can’t honestly say that he feels hungry, but since it’s right there and he can still hear Phichit‘s voice in his ears— _just promise me you’ll eat, okay?_ —he eats the other half of the apple.

Then he goes to the bathroom, drinks some more water, and settles down in his bedroom next to his charging phone while he waits for Phichit‘s inevitable phone call.

 

* * *

 

He takes a deep breath when Phichit‘s name lights up the screen.

“Hi Peach.“

“You can’t do this, Yuuri! You can’t just disappear like that!“

Yuuri deflates a little at the sound of his voice. Phichit sounds upset, of course, but from his tone Yuuri can already tell that his relief outweighs his anger.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, really. I just fell asleep.“

“You fell asleep? Please, no one sleeps for that long! What happened?“

Yuuri closes his eyes, buries his face in his knees as if that would make any difference to how the conversation is going.

“You know full well that I can sleep for much longer than that, Peaches“, he says, his voice now doubtless a little muffled, “I guess I needed it. I was just watching something on the couch and then I was out like a light. I really didn’t mean to worry you.“

Most of that is utter bullshit, but at least it’s decently believable bullshit. Yuuri isn’t actually sure how much sleep he got while he was on that sofa, if any.

“Yuuri, you can’t—you can’t do stuff like that when I’m halfway across the world. I was really freaking out here.“

“I know. I’m sorry. I know. I didn’t mean to. I’m okay, though. I promise.“

What difference is one more promise going to make?

There’s a static on the line that indicates Phichit‘s sighing.

“I’m okay“, Yuuri repeats, “I hope—did practice go okay today?“

“It went alright enough. It’ll go better tomorrow, provided you...“, there’s another staticky noise, then a long pause.

“Peach?“

“Listen, Yuuri“, Phichit says, and a cold weight drops into Yuuri‘s stomach, “I know this is difficult—it’s hard for me to say, because I don’t even want to think about it.“

Another pause, and the ice in Yuuri‘s stomach twists painfully.

“I need—I need to know you’re not thinking of hurting yourself, Yuuri. I need you to tell me that.“

Yuuri lets out a breathy laugh as if the very notion was ridiculous, but it’s too high, too nervous even in his own ears.

“That’s not—shit, I’m not going to hurt myself, Phichit“, he says, because that’s the closest thing to the truth that he can say, “I’m going to be right here watching you. And I’m going to be right here when you come back, safe and sound. Honest. Please don’t—you don’t have to worry about me. Just focus on your short tomorrow. I want to see you doing well this weekend. I know you can do well.“

By his silence Yuuri can tell that Phichit is not buying it. He knows him too well.

“You’re deflecting, Yuuri. Don’t think I don’t know that. You’re saying that as if the competition is all that matters. It isn’t. _You_ matter. You matter so much more. You could call me ten seconds before my short starts, and I would pick up, no hesitation. I hope you know that, Yuuri. I hope you know that you matter to me.“

Yuuri does know, which is exactly why he needs to make these next words count. Because he could never demand that kind of sacrifice from Phichit.

“I know, Peach. Honestly, I do. How could I not know I matter to you after you just blew up my phone like that because I took a long nap? I know, and I promise if I needed you, I would call, even if it’s ten seconds before your slot.“ (He wouldn’t.) “But unless I do, I need you to trust me to be alright. I need you to trust me to reach out if I need you, and put it out of your mind until then. Focus on yourself, focus on your own needs and wants, and then, when I really do need you, I will gladly accept you dropping everything for me. But this—...“, Yuuri takes a deep breath, voice wavering, “this right now isn’t helping me. All it does is make me feel guilty for making you worry and distracting you from the important things in your own life. So please—please, just... trust me to take care of myself as best I can, and if that proves not to be enough any more, I will come to you. I promise.“

It feels like the most he’s spoken in a long time. He feels like he should be winded by the end of it. His head is still pounding, and now so is his heart, agitated by pressing these words out of his lips, gnawing them into bite sized pieces between his teeth.

The other end of the line is silent for a long while. The hand holding Yuuri‘s phone is shaking, breath stuttering.

Phichit‘s voice, when it finally comes through the speakers, tinny and crackling, is so small.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?“

“No. Peaches, no.“ The words rush out of him with a single breath. “That’s not what I want. I want—I would like for you to stop treating me like I’m fragile. To trust that I know what I’m doing—that I know what I need right now. Do you—does that make sense to you?“

“I—Maybe?“, Phichit still sounds so very far away. “I’m not sure. I’m just... worried about you.“

“I know.“ Unbidden, Yuuri‘s free hand begins picking at the cracked skin of his lips. “I’m not telling you not to be. I’m just asking you to... not lose sight of your own life in the process. I need—I need to not feel like I’m bringing you down with me.“

“Yuuri, no, that’s—“, Phichit‘s protest is immediate, but Yuuri doesn’t let him get very far.

“Phichit, just—please? Do this for me? This is what I need.“

The silence draws on longer and longer, and Yuuri feels his chest crack, split open along with his lip, blood and dread spilling out.

“Alright, Yuuri“, Phichit finally says, “Alright. I should trust you. I’m going to trust you.“ He sighs. “I’ll be home soon, and I’ll be bringing a medal. Make sure you eat, okay? And—just... text me back every once in a while, alright?“

Yuuri licks the blood off his lips slowly, his tongue heavy with relief.

“I will. I will. Now go get some sleep, Peaches. It’s a big day tomorrow.“

There’s another long pause at the other end of the line, but then Phichit just says: „Goodnight, Yuuri.“

 

 

Yuuri sits silently, staring at his phone, a long time after Phichit has hung up.

He’s still trying to process the conversation he just had, the words he said and how much truth there was to them.

He hadn’t known he’d been thinking them before they spilled from his lips, had just said what the conversation demanded, said what he needed to say in order to hopefully steer Phichit‘s focus back to where it needed to be.

To keep Phichit from following in his footsteps in the worst possible way, messing up his competition out of worry for someone half a world away who he couldn’t possibly do anything to help.

Yuuri hunched in on himself, shoulders curling.

Nothing Yuuri could have done in Sochi would have prevented Vicchan from dying. (Did that make it better or worse?)

If Yuuri had managed to shake himself out of his spiral of guilt and grief and performed decently, Vicchan still would have died. (Did that make it better or worse?)

If Yuuri hadn’t seen Mari‘s call until after the competition and performed his free as well as he did his short; if he had made the podium alongside Victor, Vicchan still would have died. (Did that make it better or worse?)

 

If Yuuri did plan on dying this weekend, nothing Phichit could do from Taipei would change that.

 

Yuuri does not plan on dying this weekend (though if a calamity of some sort did happen to come along, he doubts he would put up much of a fight), but his simply saying so would hardly convince Phichit.

He needed to make him believe.

But as the words left his mouth, he realised there was more truth in them than he’d anticipated. A harsher truth, at that.

Yuuri _does_ hate the thought of Phichit compromising his own life for his sake.

Yuuri _does_ feel worse for his additional guilt over his treatment of Phichit.

But most of all, Yuuri _does_ hate that Phichit treats him like he’s fragile. That he thinks Yuuri so weak. That he does not believe Yuuri to be stronger than this.

Granted, Yuuri has given him little reason to believe it, and he most definitely does not believe it himself. But if not even Phichit will believe him to be strong enough, then who will?

 

* * *

 

He’s still sitting, hunched over at the edge of the bed, phone in hand, clicking on the screen every few minutes out of sheer force of habit.

Thursday, 11:37 a.m.

He’s missed two classes yesterday, lost in his stupor, and another this morning, but he hadn’t really been planning to attend this week anyway. Most of his classes don’t have mandatory attendance, and if they do he hasn’t missed so many that he couldn’t get away with one more.

His Thursday afternoon class though—he’s missed a couple of sessions already, with leave, for competitions. The teacher probably wouldn’t mind if he missed another, but it’s not an easy class, and Yuuri needs to pass it if he wants to graduate this term.

He should go.

He should go, he should get up and take a shower and leave the house. He should move.

His body doesn’t move.

He bargains.

 _Come on_ , he thinks, _if you go to class now, you can fall straight into bed when you’re home._

It’s not a good argument, because he could fall straight into bed now, but that doesn’t mean he’d be able to sleep.

He tries again:

_If you go to class, you can buy anything you want to eat on your way home._

_If you go to class, you can play World of Warcraft all night when you’re back._

_If you go to class, you might get run over by a truck on the way._

That one gets his attention.

No matter what unlikely scenarios the part of him that wants to _sleep and just not wake up_ comes up with, as long as he stays here, he’s about as safe as he can be.

Out there, anything can happen. Accidents happen. Crimes happen. He can’t put much of his hope into an actual catastrophe, not like in Japan where at least the anticipation of an earthquake is never really unreasonable. But things happen. Things might happen to him.

It’s a foolish and a stubborn thing to hope for, but it’s the only hope he has, as long as it is like this.

Despite what Phichit might believe, Yuuri doesn’t actually want to kill himself. He just wants to die.

No; he doesn’t really want to die, either. He just wants to not be alive.

It’s foolish, and he knows that nothing is going to happen to him when he goes outside.  
But as long as it gets his body moving, he clings to the thought fiercely.

It drags him out of his bedroom and into the bathroom, into the shower, with a brief respite in front of the mirror, where Yuuri stares at his knees and his thighs for a long time. Bruises are starting to bloom on his skin where he bumped against the coffee table and the sofa.

He traces the colours with his fingertips.

This is the thing that he still misses about the ice, even now: Yuuri has never been one to actively harm himself, even when he was at his lowest, in his teenage years and when he first moved to Detroit. And why would he, when he just needed to go out on the ice and could wear his pain on his skin like a badge of honour, and no one would think twice about it? He’s never had to try very hard to hurt himself—his own incompetence hurt him plenty every day.

He never thought about how much he needed that until all his bruises faded, leaving his skin pale and empty. But even then he hadn’t really gotten to the point of hurting himself, not deliberately, anyway. He’d used it to bargain, once or twice: _If you go take a shower now, you can cut yourself in the bathroom. Just go to class now and then you can hurt yourself tonight._ It was just enough incentive to overcome his inertia, but in the end he had never followed through.

Now, though—seeing this, seeing the reds and purples unfolding again on his skin, he feels a deep, tugging need in his gut to see more of it. Wants to see the slow rainbow fade of the blood under his skin, wants to trace the faint circles and clouds like nebulas on his body, a galaxy of hurt made visible, tangible—true.

It makes him miss the ice like he hasn’t since before Sochi—for all the wrong reasons, but visceral, a magnetic pull that he yet cannot give in to.

 

He takes his shower and actually goes to class.  
When he comes home he checks the fridge and ends up eating leftover rice with eggs and a couple of forkfuls of _wakame_ salad straight out of the container.

That night, he scours the internet for a decent livestream of 4CC, so he can watch the men’s short program.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW:** depression, dissociation, self-harm/suicidal ideation, disordered eating (as a symptom of depression rather than an actual eating disorder).
> 
> Don't worry though... we're through the worst of it now!
> 
> Now we've met two of Phichit's hamsters already! Anyone remember what the other one was called, and any guesses as to how the two of them came by their names?? 😉  
> Let's see if I can find a way to include hamster #3...
> 
> Soft reminder that I literally thrive on comments! 😘😘😘
> 
> Chapter title from [Sky Full of Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1TSiB9OuVM) by Florence + the Machine:  
>  _Hold me down, I'm so tired now_  
>  _Aim your arrow at the sky_  
>  _Take me down, I'm too tired now_  
>  _Leave me where I lie_
> 
>  
> 
> _I thought I was flying, but maybe I'm dying tonight._


	13. you could have it any other way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, all my thanks to my betas, [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/).
> 
> Words are in short supply again this week. Thank you for reading.
> 
>  **CW** in the end notes.

 

It’s there one day, suddenly, when he gets out of the shower.

It’s a Wednesday.  
It’s not any different from the weeks and weeks before that, as far as Yuuri can tell, not in any discernible way.

It’s the beginning of March, about a week after Phichit has returned from Four Continents with a bronze medal in tow. It’s one of the first days of the year that the winter sun has decided to show itself over the grey rooftops of Detroit. It’s still cold outside and there’s a biting wind, from the way that his shutters are rattling outside Yuuri‘s windows, but inside, where the sun shines in, his room is warm and bright, when he steps in after his shower.  
It’s not the first day like this, but one of the first. It is, however, the first day that Yuuri has noticed.

It’s not a special day. It’s just a Wednesday like any other.

Yuuri got out of bed around 11 in the morning to take a shower. He needs one, and he was thinking of taking a walk to the grocery store, not the dingy one down the block, the big box one half an hour’s walk from the flat. He could shop for groceries, and he needs to drop by the post office anyway, papers he needs to send in for his impending graduation.

That’s what he was thinking, half-heartedly, as he went to take his shower, and he spends ten minutes under the hot gusts of water contemplating Hasetsu vaguely.

He thinks about the onsen first, prompted by the water, the bathroom steaming up around him, and how a shower will never quite live up to a soak. He thinks of how he misses the feel of tatami under his bare feet, the faraway sounds of the sliding doors all throughout the inn late at night when he lies awake in his bed.

He thinks about the konbini and how long it’s been since he’s had any decent oden. Or Umaibo. Although he has to admit he’s indulged in those more than a few times when he’s been back in Japan for competitions. He thinks about how American Kit-Kat just doesn’t taste right.

He thinks about being able to get genmaicha anywhere, without having to go out of his way to find one of the Asian markets in the city, or having to pay outrageous amounts of shipping fees when ordering it online. He thinks about the smell of it in the morning as he gets up and there’s a pot of it already brewed and just waiting for him to help himself.

He thinks of his mother’s voice, the way it trills when she calls her _okaeri_ when he opens the door. He thinks of how he can trail his sister’s way through the inn as she pursues this chore and that by the faint smell of cold cigarette smoke she leaves behind in the corridors. He thinks of the heat and quiet of the onsen when he soaks late at night, coming home from a long day of practice.

Homesickness crashes over him in a desperate wave, pulling him under. He wants to be home.

He just wants to be home.

And he could be.

His head snaps up as he realises. He could be—he can be. It’s all in his hands. He’s about to graduate, and then nothing is keeping him. Nothing, nothing, nothing but his own mind.

He turns off the shower and wraps himself in his towel.  
When he returns to his room, he sinks down gingerly on the bed, the heat of the water still weighing like exhaustion on his shoulders, his eyelids. It’s still dripping, like bullets of lead on his mattress, his towel, his thighs. Dripping onto him with a heavy impact, suddenly, like his thoughts.

Yes—there they are, his thoughts.

The fog is lifted, all at once, and he can hear them clearly.

There’s a focus, suddenly, a sharpness to his surroundings, his body, his self. No more is the voice at the back of his neck, it’s right there at the forefront of his mind, in his own throat.

He stares ahead, at the door of his dresser, his room drenched in soft sunlight filtering in through the window. He stares at the grain of the wood, flowing in gentle patterns of stroke and swirl.

It’s not a significant moment. It’s not special. There are no great revelations, no catharsis, no epiphanies. There has been nothing to set these thoughts off, no big twist to set the ball rolling.

It’s just this:

“You need to stop“, he says out loud, a forceful whisper, hissing between his teeth.

“You need to stop and pull yourself together, and you need to do it now.“

“You can’t keep going like this, and you can’t keep waiting for something to change.“

“You don’t have to wait to hit rock bottom. You can stop. Now.“

The whispers bounce back at him in the small room, growing softer and yet more forceful.

“Just stop. Do something. Make the decision now. You don’t need to wait. You don’t need to wait for Monday. You don’t need to wait for tomorrow morning. You can just make the decision now.“

“You can do it. You know you can. You’ve done it before. Just snap out of it.“

“You can’t keep going like this. Something needs to change. _You_ need to change something. You’re not happy. You’re not okay. You’re not living.“

“You need to stop this. You need to do something. Make a decision. Take a step. Act. Now.“

The words stir something in him, move something—they shift a weight inside him that hasn’t moved in weeks, months.

They don’t lift it, it doesn’t disappear, but it shifts, tumbles a little and leans to the side in a way that puts pressure on parts of him that he hasn’t paid attention to in a while.

It’s uncomfortable. It won’t be ignored.

He nods to himself.

 

“Here’s what you are going to do.“

 

* * *

 

He gets dressed in the end, and he does take that walk to the store, trying hard to concentrate on every step and on feeling the weak rays of the winter sun on his skin.

At the store, he stands in front of every aisle for a long while, silently, debating himself.

He manages to tear himself away from the candy aisles without anything making its way into his basket. He even walks past the chips eventually, after berating himself intensely for a minute inside the privacy of his own mind.

 

He does buy popcorn kernels, but it’s the plain ones, not the ones already drenched in artificial butter and salt.

He’s less successful when he gets to the frozen foods section. Suddenly, there’s barbecue wings in his basket, and a brick of frozen lasagna.

 

He stands in the produce section, trying to swallow around the prices of produce in Michigan March, but he buys some tomatoes, some salad greens because he knows they’re almost out, a few firm green pears.

 

He pays for his purchase with a now familiar feeling of guilt settling in his stomach and makes his way back home.

 

* * *

 

The day still gets away from him. His mind still gets away from him.

He feels himself slip off time and again, slip back into the fog, his thoughts drift off until he’s left in blessed silence again.

Back at the apartment he puts away the groceries, vaguely thankful that Phichit isn’t there to comment on them, be it positively or negatively.

He doesn’t want attention drawn to anything he might be doing differently; for one, he’d much rather keep pretending that Phichit doesn’t notice half of his unhealthy behaviours, and what is more, it feels like Phichit acknowledging any tentative steps in the right direction Yuuri might be taking out loud might chase them away as quickly as they came, jinx any progress, spook him like a skittish horse.

He wants to know if this is more than a whim, something more lasting than a passing reprieve, before he really acknowledges it.

If this fails before it even starts, he would only end up feeling more ashamed.

 

He was contemplating cooking something on the way back from the store, but now that he’s here he feels exhausted, a weariness turning his blood into sludge, his movements sluggish.

He stands in the kitchen for a couple long minutes, staring at the stove, mentally going through the steps it would take for him to prepare a meal now, and it feels like a monumental task.

 

He’s just going to sit down for a minute, on the sofa, just to catch his breath, just to gather some energy. It won’t matter if he starts cooking ten minutes later, or half an hour, maybe.

He stares ahead at a corner of the turned off TV, trying to will himself to stay present, trying to force his thoughts to focus.

He was going to do things today. Act.

He was going to cook, and then he wanted to give his room a much-needed cleaning. There are still things to do for his classes tomorrow and he should do laundry, too. There’s still an email from his advisor sitting unanswered in his university inbox. Not to mention that he has barely checked his official email in the last couple of months. He also hasn’t called home in a while, and he should definitely talk to Celestino, has been avoiding him for too long.

The list of things he needs to _act_ on keeps steadily growing in his mind and with it his eyes grow wider, hands clench tighter, as two solid months of neglected responsibilities assert their presence and demand his attention.

The growing pile of tasks send a familiar, if all but forgotten, thrum of anxiety through his body.  
What is he going to say? How is he going to explain? God, he is going to have to talk to the JSF. He is going to have to write emails and make phone calls.

A low sound of distress sounds deep in his throat and he can feel cold sweat prickle on the back of his neck.

He’s been numb for so long, he has almost forgotten what it feels like, the catching of his breath in his lungs, the painful compression of his chest, squeezing, squeezing.

He can’t deal with this, it’s too much all at once.

An intense sense of pressure overcomes his mind, a pressure that has nothing to do with the painful constriction of his chest.

Panic tingling in his fingertips, he does the only thing he knows how; he shoves away all of his thoughts, back, back, tamps them down until there’s a firm crust over them, hard-packed earth.

He lets his awareness slip away from him, the focus that he’d been trying so hard to hold onto all day. He lets it go, lets it give, until the tether is loose, until it floats just out of reach, far enough for him to ignore, close enough to rein back in.

Too much. Too much all at once.

 

The sense of pressure is subsiding, but there’s still the adrenaline of panic in him, an electric sting in his nerves, and he cannot sit still any longer.

He’s going to cook, that’s what he’ll do. That much he can do, he’s going to make dinner for himself and Phichit, that’s it, that’s all he needs to do, that’s all that needs his attention.

He goes back into the kitchen and focuses on one task after the next.

 

* * *

 

By the time Phichit comes home, Yuuri feels drained.

Dinner is well under way, but every time there is a moment of waiting between tasks, he drags both hands over his face with a sigh. He’s sure he can feel the physical presence of the dark circles under his eyes.

He just wants to sit down and close his eyes for a moment.

Phichit greets him in his usual good spirits, but he seems to notice that Yuuri is fraying around the edges, because he looks around, taking in the stir fry Yuuri is making, and sets about helping him without comment.

He finishes chopping the cabbage while Yuuri stirs, and gets the seasonings he knows Yuuri will want to use out of the cupboard, all the while making idle chit-chat that doesn’t really require any input from Yuuri.

Yuuri feels a small rush of gratitude, but mostly he just feels tired.

By the time the food is done he doesn’t actually feel much like eating, but he sits down on the couch, bowl in his lap, while Phichit puts on a sitcom, something simple, something that doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Sometimes it feels like a firm hold on his throat, reassuring and restricting both at once, the way Phichit understands him even without any words.

 

They eat, letting the show wash over them. The stir fry is delicious, and Yuuri laughs at a few of the jokes, and by the end of the second episode, their bowls piled on the coffee table, their bodies sprawled on the couch, legs intertwined, Yuuri doesn’t feel quite so tired any more.

 

Phichit is scrolling through his phone, typing every once in a while, pausing now and again to show Yuuri a meme or a cute dog, so Yuuri picks up his phone, too.

He scrolls idly through Instagram, checking the posts he missed in the last few days. There’s a lot of ice on his feed—everyone’s preparing for Worlds. He scrolls past all of it, careful not to like any of them. He does like three separate pictures of dogs, though (one Australian Shepherd, a couple of Fox Terrier puppies and one Shiba Inu), one of a whole pile of kittens, one particularly friendly looking snake wearing a hat, and finally a ramen grilled cheese from one of the food blogs he follows.

He scrolls back up, and a new post pops up at the top of his feed, posted just a couple of minutes ago by Phichit.

It’s a short video of Phichit at the rink, flying over the ice with a series of twizzles, then circling back around to throw a wink at the camera.

It’s not even ten seconds long, and Yuuri stares at it, looping over and over, stares at Phichit‘s easy movement, at the edges of his skates slicing into the ice as he turns and turns and turns.

Yuuri likes the post, then exits out of Instagram, glancing at the clock on his home screen.  
It’s not too late yet.

He mumbles some excuse as he gets up and goes to his room, feeling Phichit‘s curious gaze at the back of his neck. He keeps his eyes fixed on his phone, searching for the right number and hitting the call button before he can think about it too much.

He closes the door to his room firmly behind him before the call connects.

“Celestino, hello... I’m sorry for calling so late. — Yeah. — I was—Could—Do you maybe have a moment tomorrow so we could talk?“

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW** : dissociation, mild panic attack
> 
> Chapter title from [What the Water Gave Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am6rArVPip8) by Florence + the Machine:  
>  _'Cause they took your loved ones_  
>  _But returned them in exchange for you_  
>  _But would you have it any other way?_  
>  _Would you have it any other way?_  
>  _You could have it any other way_
> 
>  **Next time** : One step forward, two steps back... or is it two steps forward, one step back?


	14. tear out all your tenderness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grab some tissues and settle in for a long boy, friends.
> 
>  
> 
> And give it up for my lovely betas [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/).
> 
> **CW** in the end notes.

 

It happens on one of those days when irritation sits like an itch under his skin.

He doesn’t even notice at first.

He wakes in the morning with a decent amount of energy and gets out of bed without issue, makes tea. Phichit’s at practice, of course, and Yuuri’s glad to have the flat to himself.

After his first cup of tea and some aimless social media scrolling, he settles down at his desk to work on an assignment. He tries—he does. But his mind just won’t stay on the task, every few minutes he drifts off or gets distracted.

His study playlist is on in the background, but each song gets on his nerves after thirty seconds, he skips, skips, skips again.

He jumps from one essay to the next, unable to get through more than a page of any of them—this one’s written in a stupidly convoluted style, that one has unnecessary rambling footnotes, the next is aggressively racially biased.

He ends up shoving his materials away from him with an exasperated sigh, and drags his fingernails sharply over his forearms in an involuntary gesture.

Something is buzzing under his skin.

He forces his hands to still only when his skin is an angry bright red hue, and he realises it’s one of those days.

He’s angry.  
He’s so fucking angry.

He doesn’t get these days a lot and he hates them.  
Those days when everything burns red hot in his mind for no discernible reason. When every sensation and every word and every careless action feels like sandpaper on his skin, fraying him, riling him up.  
The days when he will yell at inanimate things and snap at Phichit and clench his fists with his desire to break things.

He doesn’t like feeling angry.  
It’s not him, he’s not supposed to feel like this. It feels so intrusive, like his mind is not his own, much more so than anything else. It’s strange, alien.

Anxiety and numbness are natural to him, are familiar friends. Anger never was.

But it’s an emotion.  
It’s energy, destructive though it is.

And now that he knows, he can work with it at least.

He puts on his Nine Inch Nails Playlist, and though he still has to skip around a bit, once he finds the right songs, it helps.

He tries to distract himself for a while, but everything is grinding on his nerves—his favourite YouTube channels, Reddit, _Ori and the Blind Forest_... it all just pisses him off more for some reason.

He sits, teeth gritted, fingernails digging into his skin.

He needs to work it off, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to.

It’s angry energy, but it’s energy—and if he works it off, he’ll sink back into apathy, he’ll be exhausted again, he can already tell.

He’s so _tired_ of being tired.

He hates it, but he wants to hold on to the humming in his veins just a little longer.

 

He moves through the apartment, restless, prowling like a caged animal, from his room through the hallway and the living room into the kitchen and back, again, and again until he’s almost dizzy from the close turns.

Nine Inch Nails is still playing on his laptop, but it’s tinny, and it’s not enough.

On his next turn through the living room, he picks up his headphones from the sideboard, unplugs them, dusts them off.

They connect within a few seconds and then Yuuri is flicking through the songs, turning up the volume.

Then there’s _Discipline_ and _All the love in the world_ and _Where is Everybody_ and _Only_ and _Only_ and _Only_ again, pounding it’s rhythm into his ears, so close, so loud, almost tangible, and he stops walking.

He’s standing, behind the couch, both hands clutched to the sides of his headphones, pressing them closer, closer, relishing in the almost painful thrum of the bass in his head.

And he’s not dancing, no, just kind of swaying on his feet, rocking back and forth, eyes closed, unable to not feel the music with every fibre of himself.

He tries to breathe through the red heat in his chest, silently screaming along with the lyrics, fingers clenching painfully around the plastic casing of the headphones.

He’s not sure if the music is calming him down or riling him up further, just knows he couldn’t possibly part with it right now. Knows he doesn’t want to focus on anything else but the sound waves entering through his ears and painting a stark picture of music right there behind his forehead, in his brain stem, between his eyes.

He doesn’t know how often the song has run on repeat, but eventually he finds himself crouching on the floor right there, face buried in his thighs, elbows caging in his knees, hands half clutched on the headphones, half buried in his hair.

Eventually he doesn’t feel like he’s about to explode out of his skin.

 

* * *

 

Phichit comes home in the early afternoon, with Yuuri pressed into one corner of the couch in the living room.

“ _Okaeri_ “, he mumbles automatically, almost at the same time as Phichit’s equally automatic but much more chipper “ _tadaima_ “.

Phichit looks surprised to see him, which is fair, but irritates Yuuri nonetheless.  
He isn’t thrown for long though, but rather launches straight into the apparently _most hilarious thing that happened at the rink today, you wouldn’t believe, Yuuri!_

“So, you remember how Cara’s been going on about that guy Robert in her History of Britain class? The one who she says dresses so well all the time? Well, today she finally learned his last name and...“

Yuuri presses his lips together and hums vaguely every once in a while, not really listening, stare fixed on the screen of his laptop on his knees, though he has yet to find anything to do on it.

Phichit doesn’t seem to register that Yuuri doesn’t laugh or even smile at his story, and it makes him even angrier.

A part of his brain tells him _I don’t give a shit. Just shut the fuck up already_. And the rest of him feels guilty, which makes him angrier still.

There was a reason why he sat in the living room rather than his own too quiet and too stifling bedroom: up until roughly thirty seconds ago, he’d longed for Phichit to come home, for his company and his cheerful energy.

Now he just wants to be left alone.  
He wants Phichit to stop annoying him.  
For him to shut the fuck up.  
He wants Phichit to see how angry he is and talk to him.  
He wants him to drag Yuuri somewhere, anywhere else, and take him out of his own head.  
He wants him to curl up on the couch with him and just sit, together, touching.

(He feels like he hasn’t touched anyone since he came home from Nationals.  
He’s only _been_ touched.)

He wants everything and nothing and he knows whatever Phichit will do will be wrong and his eyes burn in shame at that knowledge.

Phichit asks him about his dinner plans, and none of the answers that crowd onto Yuuri’s tongue are anywhere close to acceptable.

He bites his lips and does not look at Phichit, fists clenched into his sweat pants.

“Yuuri?“, Phichit prompts and leans closer into his field of vision.

Yuuri flashes him a quick look to indicate he’s not spaced out and he’s heard him, but he continues to chew up all the possible responses that flood into his mouth.

Phichit seems to read something in his face, because he straightens up with a soft _oh_.

He slips out of his jacket and perches gingerly on the armrest of the couch, leaving generous space between them.

“No talking today?“

Yuuri can practically feel the harsh lines etched around his mouth as he nods sharply, and that should have been the end of it.

Phichit knows him well enough, knows that Yuuri only goes really non-verbal when he’s angry like this. He’s always quiet, never a man of many words, but when he’s like this, all the words on his tongue turn into venom, and he’d rather swallow them all back down to sit in his stomach like acid than spew them at Phichit who’s done nothing to deserve it.

Phichit knows what’s happening when he goes quiet like this, and he should know better.

But maybe Phichit doesn’t think about it, or maybe the chance is just too tempting, the chance to talk to Yuuri, talk at Yuuri without Yuuri brushing him off or running away.

Who knows what goes on in Phichit’s mind, but he opens his mouth.

“Why won’t you talk to me, Yuuri?“, he says, softly, and Yuuri glares.

“Not now, I mean, but at all? I know you’re struggling but you always used to at least talk to me. I’ve—I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve never seen you like this. I’m—I’m scared. For you. So far I’ve kept Ciao-Ciao off your back because I thought you just needed some time to work through this, but you’re not and, Yuuri, this isn’t healthy. I want to help you, but I’m starting to think this is bigger than either of us. Maybe you should go see someone. I know you’ve always wanted to work through this on your own, but this... this is something different from your usual anxiety and your bad days and... You know there’s no shame in getting help, right? Really, there isn’t. I just want you to be okay.“

Yuuri lets Phichit’s words wash over him and tries not to listen too closely, but there’s a hot lump of anger and shame and defensiveness sitting in his throat and he struggles to breathe past it.

He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t look at Phichit.

Phichit reaches out a hand toward his arm, slowly, giving Yuuri time to move away, but he doesn’t, he can’t. Suddenly, Phichit’s warm fingers on his bare skin are all he can think about. He stares at them with a mixture of apprehension and relief.

“I worry about you“, Phichit says, and something in Yuuri gives way.

“Well, don’t!“, he snaps, jerking his arm away and missing the contact instantly, “I didn’t ask for your concern.“

“No. You didn’t have to“, Phichit replies, and his voice is still so soft and kind that Yuuri wants to strangle something, “You’re my best friend, and I love you, and I’m going to be concerned about you whether you ask for it or not.“

Yuuri tries to grit his teeth, but now the gates are open, now there’s no more chance of holding back his words.

“Don’t—just don’t. I don’t want your pity.“

Phichit just sighs, long and deep and with an edge of impatience now.

“I’m not pitying you, Yuuri. The only one here who’s pitying you is yourself. You’re wallowing. It’s not like you. You always pick yourself back up and... I was trying to give you time, but clearly time isn’t helping. You need to do something. Anything.“

Yuuri digs his fingernails into the soft skin of his arms.

“Don’t say that like—like it’s easy. Like you understand“, he hisses.

“You’re right. I don’t understand. How could I, when you don’t tell me anything? If you’d just tell me what happened...“

“For fuck’s sake, Phichit—“

Yuuri is on his feet before he knows it, his voice now harsh in his throat, loud in his ears.

“There’s nothing to fucking tell, don’t you get it? Nothing _happened_. This—this is all there is. It’s just me. Just me being—...“ _weak. pathetic. broken._ “There’s nothing more than this. There’s no reason for me to feel this way.“

He’s trembling now. He wants to pace, turn away, he can’t look at Phichit, can’t look into his eyes. The skin of his arms is screaming with the overstimulating pressure of his fingernails.

“I cannot talk about this because there’s nothing to talk about. There’s no words, do you understand? I have no words to describe that I feel like I’m in _pieces_ for no reason at all. No words to make you understand how I feel. No words that won’t turn pathetic and hollow and empty and so fucking trivial as soon as they’re out of my mouth.“

He’s curling in on himself now and he can feel the breath catching in his lungs, the familiar pressure of a panic attack as all the angry energy starts to seep out of him.

“How can I explain to you that I feel like someone scooped a hole into me for no good reason? That I don’t know where that part of me has gone? I don’t know if I’ve left it in Sochi, or in Sapporo, or if it’s been burned along with Vicchan’s bones. How can I explain to you that it took all of the most important parts of me and how scared I am that I will never get them back?“

His breath is becoming more ragged now, more shallow, his knees giving in under the tremors of his body. The rug barely dulls the thump of his bones on the linoleum floor.

“How can I say any of this to you when I know that you won’t—you can never understand any of it! To you, it’s just words, just sounds coming out of my mouth and—I know you try to understand, I know you do, but you can never _know_ —can never know—“

One last stuttering breath and then no more air will come—no more air, and he’s gasping, doubling over, and Phichit is beside him in an instant.

He registers distantly that Phichit is talking, is speaking to him, but he can’t make out the words, can’t make out anything beyond the static rush of blood in his ears.

Something touches his arm and he jerks back violently.

His own mouth is still moving, too, tongue forming words, but it feels distant, heavy, the movements of his lips sluggish, like he’s underwater, the sound of his voice muffled as if through a layer of cotton.

He can’t breathe.  
He can’t breathe.

The pressure on his chest is becoming unbearable.

 

There’s a touch again on his arm, around his wrist, and the fact that it’s not unexpected this time tells him that Phichit has asked, and that possibly some recess of his brain processed the words well enough to nod, and now there’s again warm skin against his skin.

Fingers are wrapped gently and yet firmly around his wrist and his hand is moved, the fingers uncurled, until there’s soft fabric against his palm and, underneath that, a firm chest slowly rising and falling with steady, deliberate breaths.

It takes him a few long, burning moments to pick it up, but then he focuses his entire awareness on the rise and fall of that chest, trying to wrestle his own hitching, gasping breath into some imitation of it.

Slowly, slowly his breath comes more easily, trickles into his lungs, gradually quenching the blaze and leaving in its wake a dull, smouldering ache.

Phichit keeps his hand pressed to his chest for a few long minutes after Yuuri’s breathing evens out, and eventually Yuuri registers his soft noises and words of encouragement in between breaths through the muffling cotton.

He also registers Phichit’s sniffs and the watery quality of his voice and his stomach clenches painfully in guilt.

He doesn’t dare look up, stares instead at his own hand, pale against the soft black fabric of Phichit’s sweater, and Phichit’s darker, slender fingers still wrapped around his wrist, his thumb rubbing in minute movements over the back of Yuuri’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Yuuri, I’m so sorry“, Phichit says eventually, as the quiet in the room settles back over them, “I shouldn’t have pressed you like that. I didn’t want to cause you pain.“

Yuuri wants to say something to soothe him, assure him that his apologies aren’t necessary, but he can’t find his words.

“But this is...“, Phichit continues, “it can’t go on like this. I really think you need to see someone. Talk to someone.“

It makes Yuuri go instantly rigid with terror.

He doesn’t understand, really, where it comes from, this terror of getting help. But it’s always been there. It feels like admitting defeat. It’s not rational.

“No, I’m—I’m okay. I’ll be fine“, he manages to choke out.

“ _Yuuri_ “, Phichit says, and the amount of disbelief and exasperation he manages to put into a single words is frankly amazing.

“I ca—I can’t, Phichit. I can’t talk about that right now.“

Phichit sighs.

“Can you ever? If we put it off now, we’ll never talk about it.“

“Phichit, _please_.“

He doesn’t even know what he’s pleading for, a reprieve, a moment to catch his breath, anything.

“I know this is hard, Yuuri, but we need to talk about it.“

“No. No.“

With some difficulty, Yuuri pulls his hands away from Phichit’s grasp, pushing himself up onto his feet slowly.

“No, we don’t. I just—I just need—“, he doesn’t know what he needs, “I’m _tired_ , Phichit.“

Phichit looks up at him from where he’s still settled on the floor, both hands dropped uselessly into his lap now.

“I know, Yuuri, but—“

“Just fucking leave it, Phichit“, Yuuri snaps, his irritation suddenly flaring back into life, catching even him off guard, “just stop—fucking stop—pressing me, I... I don’t need—“, he tries to bite his tongue to hold back the words, he knows he should stop talking, but they break forth from his lips without his permission, “I don’t need your hovering. Just stop—just—just leave me _the fuck_ alone.“

His voice echoes loudly in the quiet of the apartment and he turns away abruptly, before he can see the hurt settling on Phichit’s face, and if Phichit says anything else, it’s drowned out by the sound of the door to Yuuri’s room slamming shut.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri’s headphones are still right there on the bed where he left them earlier this afternoon, and he’s thankful.  
He pulls them on with shaking fingers, hastily, like listening to the silence of the room for any second longer than needed is physically painful.

Curling up on the covers he connects them to his phone and flips through his playlists.

He starts with Nine Inch Nails again, grabbing onto the frantic energy of them at first, but selecting increasingly more subdued songs as he goes— _The Hand That Feeds_ first, then _Sunspots_ , then _Every Day is Exactly the Same_ , and finally _Something I Can Never Have_ —until even that doesn’t carry enough sorrow for the wrenching pain in his chest, for the deep, shuddering sobs tearing through him, muffled to his own ears by the headphones, but not to Phichit’s, as he knows. He clamps a hand over his mouth, desperately trying to hold them back.

He flicks through his music library again, shaky and hurried, but with purpose, and something in him unclenches when the first lilting notes of Florence + the Machine drip into his ears.

_My love has concrete feet, my love is an iron ball. My love has concrete feet, my love is an iron ball wrapped around your ankles, over the waterfall._

He listens to _Heavy in Your Arms_ four times before he manages to drag himself into a sitting position, still shuddering, tears dripping in quick succession onto his mattress.

He breathes through the fifth time, hands twisted into his sheets. He pries them loose, stiff and white-knuckled, during the last notes, and pulls his headphones off, quickly, turning them off and dropping them on the bed. Then he stumbles out of his room before he can start to doubt himself.

 

It’s still early in the evening but the living room is dark and empty, Phichit nowhere to be seen.

He turns back down the hallway and there’s a fresh flood of tears welling up in his eyes when he sees that, even now, the door to Phichit’s room is cracked open just a couple of inches.

Yuuri takes two deep, shuddering breaths before he knocks lightly, hesitantly pushing the door farther open.

Phichit turns around from where he was lying curled up on the bed, a mirror image of Yuuri just a few minutes ago.

There’s surprise and lingering hurt and so much kindness etched into his features and Yuuri doesn’t even try to hold back his tears when their eyes meet.

“Peaches“, he says, and it’s all that he can get out in between tremulous sobs.

Without a moment’s hesitation Phichit holds out his arms and Yuuri’s heart feels like it’s tearing itself into pieces in his chest.

He stumbles over to the bed and drops into the waiting circle of Phichit’s arms, giving himself over to the hurt.

 

* * *

 

He whispers hoarse, broken up apologies into Phichit’s chest until his voice gives out.

They lie curled up together for a long while after that, Phichit’s hands warm and solid on his back, Yuuri’s tears drying up and spilling forth again several times over, until he finally finds some semblance of calm, the room having long since gone dark around them.

Phichit whispers quiet assurances, calming words, but he doesn’t ask any more questions.

He doesn’t push.

 

They have been silent for what must have been at least half an hour when Yuuri pushes out the words, quickly, unable to bear the weight of them any longer.

“I talked to Celestino the other day.“

Phichit pulls pack a little, trying to get a look at his face. Yuuri keeps his eyes downturned, but he can hear the surprise in his voice.

“You did? When was this?“

Yuuri clears his throat, twisting his fingers into Phichit’s sweater.

“A few days ago? Last Thursday. I went over to his place, I didn’t... I didn’t want to be at the rink.“

Phichit thankfully doesn’t comment on that, but his voice is careful, measured, when he speaks again.

“What did you talk about?“

Yuuri takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Takes another one. Curls in on himself some more, bumping the crown of his head against Phichit’s chest.

“I’m going home“, he finally says, “Once I graduate, I’m going home.“

Phichit doesn’t speak but Yuuri can feel the slight twitch in the fingers still splayed across his back.

After a while, there’s a faint whisper next to him.

“How long?“

“Another four weeks, maybe five?“, Yuuri’s voice sounds hesitant even to his own ears, scared.

For a few tense minutes, he waits for Phichit to say something, but Phichit just ends up pulling him closer, silently burying his face in Yuuri’s hair and this time, when Yuuri wraps his arms around Phichit in turn, he‘s not sure whose sobs are shuddering through him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW** : detailed description of a panic attack, mild self-harm.
> 
> God, writing this chapter messed me up. So much hurt. Sorry, guys.  
> Also sorry about the song-dumping in here, I felt it was important to see Yuuri find his way back to music.  
> Songs: [Discipline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R_I2G_mWsc) | [All the Love in the World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkUrZvbh9bU) | [Where Is Everybody?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQJq-WJXUAU) | [Only](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwvLlEtxX3o) | [The Hand That Feeds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn7HvnMJZd4) | [Sunspots](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWmoco8XqPA) | [Every Day Is Exactly the Same](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Aj9_8t1eQc) | [Something I Can Never Have](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_lMnvdh_UY) | [Heavy In Your Arms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_eOmvM-4zc) |
> 
> Chapter title from [Howl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZweDwbJ_Ic) by Florence + the Machine.  
>  _If you could only see the beast you've made of me._  
>  _I held it in but now it seems you've set it running free. [...]_  
>  _Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins._  
>  _I want to find you, tear out all of your tenderness._
> 
> **Next Time:** Rediscoveries.


	15. a dream of life again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm here, I'm here!  
> Sorry for posting a little late. I struggled with this chapter and I was at con this weekend which didn't leave me a lot of time to wrangle with it.  
> It's here now! I hope it's not too terrible.
> 
> It is unbeta'd though, because I literally finished it half an hour ago so... fair warning.
> 
> No CW this chapter!

 

He doesn’t know what he expected, but the first time back on the ice is excruciating.

That’s a lie: he knows what he expected.  
Some naive part of Yuuri that still doesn’t want to accept how any of this works has expected that, now that he’s made the decision to not run from the ice any longer, it’ll be easy.  
That as soon as his blades touch the ice it will all fall away all of a sudden, it will all be clear, he’ll be home, and happy, and he’ll feel alive again.

He doesn’t. He feels just as tired as he did off the ice.

Part of him wants to scream at himself for expecting any different.  
The other part wants to scream at himself for wasting this perfectly good opportunity at a storybook catharsis.

All of him just really wants to scream at himself.

It’s—it’s not like it’s all bad.

He skates a few laps warming up and it’s almost effortless. He slides into skating figures without thinking and his edgework feels the same it’s always been.

He knows he’s put on a few kilos and as far as he can remember he hasn’t spent this long away from the ice... ever. Since he started skating. He half thought he’d be rusty, clumsy, and sure, his muscles tire a lot faster and he can already tell today’s not going to be one of those days when he spends hours upon hours on the ice.

But it turns out that twelve years of intense skating training aren’t actually undone by two months of inactivity, like his brain had him half-convinced it would.

Yet, at the same time, it doesn’t feel right, either.

There’s nothing wrong with his skating that he can tell, but he feels entirely out of his depth—he feels unbalanced in a way that has nothing to do with the blades at his feet and the laws of physics. He feels out of place, displaced, like he’s not supposed to be here, and his head just won’t. Shut. The fuck. Up.

He can feel his rinkmates’ and Celectino’s eyes on him like they’re waiting for him to combust, to fall and not get up again.

He stays upright, but that doesn’t mean he’s not falling. It’s just that they can’t see.

He gets his bluetooth headphones from his bag and sets his phone to his skating playlist in a desperate bid to drown out his thoughts. It’s a mix of his own old programs, other skaters‘ music that he liked and songs that he thinks would be fun to skate to.

He makes sure his own songs from this season aren’t on the list before he gets back out on the ice.

It doesn’t help.

He skates to the music, desperately trying to immerse himself, to feel something. But there’s nothing. It’s all hollow.

There’s upbeat songs and aggressive ones, romantic and heart-wrenchingly sad.

They all feel the same to Yuuri.

It’s all wrong, the movements of his hands and the heaviness as he bends his knees and the scraping of his blades on the ice, it’s all wrong—wrong—wrong.

Increasingly frustrated he skips through the songs with a tap on his headphones, barely getting thirty seconds into any song before he grits his teeth because it’s wrong, he skips, skips, skips again, until he wants to scream.

Maybe these aren’t the right songs—maybe he should switch to another playlist. There must be something that feels right in his chest right now. But he comes up empty.

There’s 64 gigabytes of music on his phone, and he’s got nothing.

He gets of the ice after two and a half agonising hours, and the way his thighs tremble when he sinks down on the bench to take of his skates has nothing to do with exertion.

He’s _so tired._

It was a mistake to come, he thinks.

I don’t belong here anymore, he thinks.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t stay that way.

He keeps coming back without really knowing why.

Not every day, but often enough.

Not all days are as bad as this, some are worse. Some are better. Still it all feels wrong, though, all unbalanced and hollow.

It’s like the ice is trying to buck him off, a stubborn mule, refusing to be led, to be tamed, to be used. Even the ice itself resents him for his failure.

 

His rinkmates keep eyeing him warily, all aware, it seems, of his meltdown this season. Celestino, who has kindly allowed him to come skate as much as he wants for the remainder of his time in Detroit, gives him well-meaning but entirely unwanted comments on his form. Phichit, in between his preparations for worlds, hovers around Yuuri like a worried mother hen, talking and joking to try and dispel his discomfort, in vain.

All of his movements on the ice still feel wrong—clumsy and choppy, devoid of the liquid flow of music that he loves so much about skating.

There’s a change, though, so gradual that he barely notices, and by his fifth time back on the ice, it feels like something has loosened in his limbs, some knot has been untied.

He still skips around his skating playlist a lot, but with the right songs he flies across the ice, all fluid movement and all feeling. For a few fleeting moments he manages to not question his every move, not to second guess how the melody flows from his core into his limbs, through his feet out into the ice.

And when the song runs out and he opens his eyes, feeling the gazes of his rinkmates on him, they don’t seem to burn on his skin quite as much.

He skates to One Ok Rock and David Bowie, to classical pieces and video game soundtracks, and with each track some of the tension seeps out of his limbs. At some point he finds himself smiling on the ice, a small thing, for him only, as the endorphins of a good workout mix with the elation of music felt in the last recess of his body.

It fills him with a tingling, a half-forgotten humming in his veins, a rush of emotion that isn’t exactly good or bad, just intense. It reminds him what it’s like to feel, allows him to get used to the feeling again without being overwhelmed by it.

There’s still certain songs that he avoids; he won’t go anywhere near his own songs from this season for the rest of his life, if he can get away with it. The mere thought of them twists something ugly in his stomach, makes him nauseous.

Some songs on his list are just the right kind of melancholy for him to get lost in, right in tune with the lingering hurt he’s been trying so hard to deny and now tries very carefully to acknowledge.

Others are grating on him, rub him raw until he frays; these he shies away from.

It takes him a while, and he still isn’t sure it’s a good idea, but eventually he stops skipping past Victor’s songs when his phone throws them at him.

 

* * *

 

The first time the first solemn notes of _Stammi Vicino_ trickle into his ears, he slows to a stop in the middle of the ice, staring ahead.

Yuuri’s alone on the ice, late in the evening, Celestino and the last of his skaters having gone home half an hour since.

He’s thankful, not having to blank out the others‘ stares as he stands completely still there on the ice, the chill cooling the sweat beaded on his forehead and his neck, focusing on nothing at all, letting the crystal clear notes of the music wash over him.

When the song is over, he pauses the music, hand hovering over his headphones.

He stares ahead, at an empty spot somewhere beyond the boards, the crisp silence of the rink muffled by his headphones.

He’s not sure what he’s feeling. _If_ he’s feeling. Anything.

He tries to sort through the tangled mess of not-quite-thought and not-quite-emotion constricting his chest and his head. It’s like there’s someone inside him overwhelmed with a rush of admiration and wistfulness, nostalgia and longing, but that someone is not him any more, and he’s not sure he can become that person anymore.

It’s like something has been severed. Maybe permanently.

It feels violent, in a way, that disconnect. As if something has slashed through the nerves that connect his brain to his heart, if there is such a thing.

After a few long moments of silence, he taps his headphones again, replays the song.

This time he closes his eyes and, unbidden, the image of Victor in his Free Skate costume, all picture perfect elegance, appears before his mind’s eye.

He tracks Victor’s movements on the ice, automatically, eyes still closed but his feet turning him, of their own accord, toward whichever direction Victor would be on the ice now.

He lets the ghostly figure of his mind run through every jump and spin, fly into a complex step sequence and then sweep across the ice in a wide arc once again.

Victor comes out of the last combination spin, gaze lifted to the skies, arms crossed, right next to Yuuri, close enough to touch.

This time he only hesitates for a second before he restarts the song, mouth suddenly dry, but tense anticipation in every one of his muscles.

With the first notes, he lifts his hand slowly to his face, tipping his head back with a dramatic turn on the ice.

 

* * *

 

To say that his mind is blessedly silent on the ice would be a blatant untruth; he’s thinking, but in the way that he always does when he skates or dances, in the way that he only can when he _moves_.

One thought after another, nice and orderly, premise and consequence, a sequence of calm, quiet and logical thought. Unhurried by panic, uncrowded by anxiety, not distorted by doubts and not stumbling from insecurity.

Just him and his mind and his body, in accord, for a single moment suspended in time. Suspended in music. Suspended in movement.

The way it’s always supposed to be.

 

He thinks about Victor first, of course, Victor always being his first and foremost thought when he’s on the ice, more so now that he’s skating his program.

He probes, gently, at the swollen and festering wound left behind after Sochi, where Victor’s careless words have dug under his skin, crawled into a recess of his body, gathering hurt around them that Yuuri isn’t sure where it comes from.

It feels like so much bigger of a wound than three words should be able to tear into anyone.

Maybe it’s time to finally pull out that splinter, drain the foul-smelling ugliness collected around it, and let it heal.

He just needs to figure out how.

 

What was it that had made the words as devastating as they had been—you know, apart from the fact that he’s worked half his life, dedicated the entirety of his life, his body, his literal blood, sweat and tears, to becoming even a blip on Victor Nikiforov‘s radar, only to discover in a single cruel—if unintentional—blow that he was so much less than nothing.

Is there more than that? Or is that really all there is? Does there need to be any more reason?

He has no right for it to feel like a personal slight, like a betrayal—Victor has no obligation to him, no responsibility or reason to be respectful of Yuuri’s feelings. Can he reasonably be expected to at least recognise by sight the competitors he’d just skated against, there being all of five of them in total? Probably.

But with all that Yuuri knows about Victor, he can’t seriously believe there to be any cruelty or callousness in Victor’s action, at most a thoughtlessness, perhaps only a moment of distraction or the stress of the competition. Yuuri has every reason to believe that Victor would feel honestly bad about his mistake if he was aware of it.

But here’s Yuuri again, thinking about Victor in terms of such familiarity. It’s so easy to forget, after all these years, after all this time slowly, ever so slowly orbiting closer to the centre of his universe that was Victor, that all of the closeness that Yuuri feels to him, all of the emotional investment, is one-sided.

 

He is nothing to Victor, and most likely he will remain nothing to Victor for the rest of his life.  
There is a good chance—the thought makes something revolt in Yuuri’s stomach—there is a good chance, if Yuuri really does choose to retire, that he will never meet Victor again.

He needs to learn to be okay with that. He needs to circle around that fact, slowly getting acclimated, until he can accept it without it tearing a hole into him.

How else is he ever find anything close to contentment in his life, if the only acceptable way for his life to go is the literal stuff of fairy tales?

If this is really as far as his career will go, if this was where it ends, he will spend the rest of his life unhappy, resentful and directionless, unable to take any other path, unless he lets go of the idea that the path leading to Victor is the only acceptable one.

 

Maybe Yuuri’s life was always meant to be an ordinary one.

Victor will always be important to him, but maybe Yuuri just wasn’t meant to strive after something that burned so brightly.

 

Those are his thoughts as he skates _Stammi Vicino_ , letting himself feel every movement in his bones. This is the meaning he accepts in his heart the song would have for him from now on.

It’s longing fiercely for something you can never have, accepting it, and letting it go.  
It’s a farewell that wrenches his ribcage open and leaves him raw and bloody, but maybe, just maybe, if Yuuri doesn’t fuck this up, it can be a new beginning as well.

 

By the time he sweeps out of the combination spin into the final pose, his muscles and his lungs are aching, rapid puffs of breath clouding the air above him.

 

* * *

 

It’s raining by the time the hockey team shows up for a late practice and he has to leave the ice to them. And of course he didn’t bring an umbrella. The rain is icy cold, the temperature only barely above freezing, and even his thick winter coat can only do so much to keep him warm.

By the time he’s home, Yuuri is soaked, his teeth chattering.

It’s dampened his elation considerably, his elation about his first time back on the ice that hadn’t left him wanting to claw his ice-reddened skin raw and bloody by the end of it.

He had been almost giddy when he left the rink, despite the rain beating down on the pavement, that deep-seated, warm satisfaction after a good session on the ice.

There isn’t much left of that warmth now, after the bus ride and the long rain-drenched walks to and from the bus stop. They have left too much time for that fleeting satisfaction to be drowned in too many thoughts and worries and quiet remarks about every small mistake he’d made on the ice.

Too much time for his body to cool down way too quickly after the heavy exercise, leaving his muscles and joints, still unused to the constant movement, stiff and aching.

Too much time for all that noise, mind, body and senses, to creep back up on him.

He dumps his soaked through bag by the door along with his shoes, thankful that he’s left his skates at the rink, and doesn’t even put up a token protest when Phichit immediately offers to make him tea.

He takes a long, steaming hot shower until he stops shivering, and fresh tea is waiting for him when he comes back into the living room.

He settles down on the sofa with Phichit, chatting with relative ease. The uncomfortable tension between them has dissipated since their fight, returning to the familiar easy-going friendship, tinged only slightly melancholy by the awareness of their time together slowly but surely running out.

Yuuri tries to keep up the conversation as best he’s able, but with the warmth settling around him and the amount of physical and mental exertion he’s gone through today, he’s exhausted, his tongue heavy and movements sluggish.

Phichit, of course, can read him like a book, and lets Yuuri drift off to a doze while he puts on a movie.

Yuuri, tucked into a corner of the sofa, a half empty mug of tea cradled in his lap and in a tired daze somewhere halfway between anxiety and satisfaction, finds himself thinking that this feels almost normal.

 

He blinks once, twice, slowly, fighting the sleepiness, and then gives in.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs: [One OK Rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY2HhiuZNdE) | [David Bowie.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgkuM2NhYI)
> 
> Chapter title from [Breath of Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d58VJ-sC1uY) by Florence + the Machine.  
>  _I was looking for a breath of life_  
>  _A little touch of heavenly light_  
>  _But all the choirs in my head sang no_  
>  _To get a dream of life again_  
>  _A little of vision of the start and the end_  
>  _But all the choirs in my head sang no_
> 
>  
> 
> _Whose side am I on, whose side am I?_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Are you ready for this to end, friends? ARE YOU? Because I certainly... am not OTL
> 
> Comments are life! Comments are love! 🖤🖤🖤


	16. cut it out and then restart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've made it through, my friends! Can you believe?
> 
> One last big thank you and all the hugs and kisses for my beta readers [Sam](https://mycrochetdex.tumblr.com/) and [Clarinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarinda0110/) who have been a great help with this story 🖤
> 
>  There will be lots of rambling in the end notes, but for now: enjoy!
> 
> One last chapter with **no CW**.

 

 _Stammi Vicino_ won’t let go of him.

He keeps replaying it in his mind, the song and the skate both, thinking back on his movements on the ice, and the decision that came with it.

He can do it better than that. He knows it.  
He physically feels the jolt of the jumps that he didn’t land cleanly, the lurch of the steps he missed, the flail of his limbs where his movements were sloppy.

He can do better. He can.

That’s the only reason why Yuuri keeps going back to it, he tells himself. If the skate was going to be a farewell of sorts, a farewell to his dreams, to Victor and what he represents, then it should be one worthy of him. It should be the best he can do.

That’s the only reason he keeps skating it over and over, mostly alone on the ice if he can steal a moment here or there.

That’s the only reason he’s overcome with a fluttery sort of satisfaction every time he lands a jump cleanly, every time the fluid grace of the choreography flows through his body, uninhibited.

 

There’s nothing more to it.

 

And if the song starts to sound a little less like a farewell with every time, well... there’s nothing that Yuuri can do to change that.

He knows better than to fight the music.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri knows, after ten years, he should have long since given up trying to logic depression away. It’s never worked before, it’s not going to start working now.

And yet, he thinks.

He can’t help it: it always seems like the most obvious thing, trying to think his way through and out of his problems. It’s what he’s always done with his anxiety—analysing and identifying the actual source of his fears. It might not make them go away, but it helps him understand himself better, assuage them, find a solution and move forward. It helps him feel more rational than he is.

It doesn’t work that way with depression: knowing the nature of the problem does absolutely nothing to change it.

He thinks back to the cluster of dirty dishes that’s slowly grown on his desk over the last weeks.

It’s mostly tea mugs—he’s not sure why.

The rest of his dishes, what little he’s been actually using in his room, always somehow makes its way back into the kitchen and is cleaned—either by him or by Phichit if Yuuri just doesn’t feel up to it right then and leaves it next to the kitchen sink, hoping to find the energy by the time he next passes them. Invariably, by that time, Phichit has already beaten him to it, and it makes thankfulness and guilt churn in his stomach.

Maybe it’s because the dirty dishes end up bothering him after a few days with their dried remains of tomato sauce or mac and cheese. They smell; or even if they don’t he inevitably thinks he can smell them, they leave him feeling filthy, more than he already does when he gets a whiff of his own body odour and realises he hasn’t showered in a couple of days.

He doesn’t have the same problem with the tea mugs, though, with their quiet rings of amber tea stains circling the top and drying at the very bottom; they never feel really dirty to him, so they end up gathering dust on his desk until they run short of clean mugs and he needs to do something about them if he wants to have his tea in the morning (or the afternoon; whenever it is he actually gets out of bed).

(This is one thing he has yet to lose his drive for: making his tea when he gets up is just as exhausting as everything else, especially with his adamant refusal to put the abomination that is bagged tea in his mouth first thing in the morning; having to measure out the loose leaf tea from its tins. And yet this is one thing he can rely on for his body to do on complete autopilot. As long as he gets out of bed at all, he’ll make tea.)

And this is how he ends up reflecting on the logic-defying nature of depression, up to his wrists in soapy water, a soggy sponge in his hand.

Because he knows now that this—cleaning the dirty mugs gathering dust on his desk—was only the work of a few minutes. He now knows with a frustrating certainty, because that’s when he ends up doing them: on a single day, in two four-minute intervals, around two p.m. and again at eight, while his lunch and dinner are heating up in the microwave.

Because the microwave is just right there next to the sink, and he has to wait for the food to heat up anyway, so he might as well clean the damn mugs.

And so he does, and its frustratingly easy and it goes so quickly and by the time the microwave pings to let him know his dinner is done, he’s put the last mug upside down on the drying rack.

And now he knows—knows that the daunting, leaden, harrowing pile of tea mugs that has been collecting on his desk for weeks was worth a whopping eight minutes of effort, and the rational and level-headed part of his brain is exasperated with him because _really, was that so hard?_ (it sounds suspiciously like Mari).

And then he chides himself quietly because he knows he can’t logic his way out of depression; it’s never worked that way.

But now the dishes are done, and there’s some space on his desk again so that he doesn’t feel like the clutter is driving him crazy, and when he opens the microwave, the steam wafting out smells of home made chicken fried rice. It’s still white rice, and not exactly part of his approved diet, but it’s home-cooked, it has fresh vegetables in it, and he’s made a big enough batch to last him a couple of days so that even if he doesn’t feel like cooking, he’ll still have a decent enough meal to eat.

He takes the plate out of the microwave.

The excess water is quietly dripping off the drying rack and running into the sink.

He shakes his head and eats his dinner sitting at his desk.

 

* * *

 

He still wakes up in a cold sweat some mornings, resurfacing from a dream that left him mangled and bloody—dead.

It’s not every night now, not by far, and he knows soon they will disappear completely, and he’ll have a few months’ reprieve. Longer, if he’s lucky.

But in the meantime it’s difficult to let go of the heaviness that clings to him still—late nights, leaden dreams and listless days.

 

He still disappears sometimes when the fog settles over him again, and then he loses a few hours or maybe a day here or there. It will stay like that for a while—he knows he’s not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

But at least he’s not spiralling downwards any longer, just kind of drifting, occasionally catching an upwards draft that carries him a little higher.

He’s still not sure about how much control he has over any of this, actually.

It’s like circumstances have taken it out of his hands, because suddenly graduation creeps up on him, and then everything happens so fast.

 

It feels almost laughably trivial—he only has a couple of finals and a last essay to hand in, some paperwork to fill out, and all of a sudden there’s a diploma in his hand.

Just a piece of paper with a little ink on it, but it’s tangible proof of what he’s done here.

If he achieved nothing else during his time in Detroit, at least he achieved this.

And no one can take this from him: he’s a graduate now.

 

He has no idea what to do with that information.  
He has no idea what to do with his degree.

He’d never really thought what to use it for—never really thought that far ahead.

He always assumed it would be a long time yet before he would have to think about what to do with the rest of his life.

 

He celebrates twice while he’s still in Detroit—once for Phichit’s sake, he lets him take him out to a quintessential American graduation party at some frat house because _that’s how things are done here, Yuuri!_

Yuuri doesn’t really feel much like it—there’s too many people and it’s too loud and there’s not even room to dance properly. And he doesn’t really feel like drinking, but of course he does anyway, because _that’s what you do._

And he forgets some of his discomfort as he drinks, and he has something like fun, but he still ends up wandering listlessly from room to room looking for some quiet or some company or somewhere to sit down or some fresh air—he’s not really sure.

But in every room, as soon as he stops for a few minutes trying to collect himself, there seems to be a person intent on hitting on him or trying to make out with him or trying to use him as a shoulder to drunk-cry on without actually knowing him at all.

Whenever he extracts himself and goes wandering in search of a new room, he thinks about how he should be spending this time with Phichit, but Phichit is somewhere in the middle of the solid mass of bodies that passes for a dance floor here and Yuuri can’t stomach that.

He tries to have fun, he really does, tries to remind himself that this is a quintessential American experience that he has yet to have before he leaves the States, but it doesn’t feel any different than any of the other frat parties and house parties that he got dragged to over the years.

It’s not like he’s miserable. There’s some good music and the alcohol loosens him up, and he laughs with Phichit whenever they find each other for a while in the crowds, until they inevitably get separated again.

There’s not even a dog at this party.

(It’s sad, but he’s also relieved. This would not be a good party for a dog. The dog would not be happy here. He wants the dog to be happy.)

 

He and Phichit walk back to their flat together arm in arm in the small hours, stumbling a little and laughing about nothing at all. They burst into the flat that seems oppressively quiet after the long hours surrounded by the noise and music of the party, and they fall into Yuuri’s bed together, clinging to each other, wordless now, their slow, measured breaths as they fall asleep staving off the silence.

 

The second time they celebrate, it’s on Yuuri’s terms.

They stay home and Yuuri makes the best imitation of his mother’s katsudon that he can with his skills and the ingredients available to him, after Phichit assures him that his graduation _most definitely counts as a win, Yuuri, please!_

They eat on the couch, watching _Orlando_ because Yuuri gets to choose, even if Phichit groans and laments about Yuuri’s taste for weird, queer period films for ten minutes before he’s finally quieted down enough that Yuuri presses play. (Even then Yuuri suspects that he only gave in because he didn’t want the katsudon getting cold.)

Once their bowls are cleaned of the last grains of rice, they snuggle up together on the couch among a heap of pillows and blankets, sighing wistfully over the pretty costumes and discussing whether or not Tilda Swinton is actually secretly an Elder God.

Phichit doesn’t even bat an eyelash when Yuuri gets up halfway through the movie and grabs a pint of caramel chocolate ice cream from the freezer, along with two spoons. They eat it straight out of the container and neither of them comments on the fact that they finish the whole thing.

It’s the best night Yuuri has had in a long time.

 

* * *

 

It happens so quickly after that—only a few more days that are filled with hectic activity, packing and cleaning, giving away or donating the things he can’t take with him.

There are travel plans to be made and some of his boxes shipped ahead to Hasetsu and in between he tries to find the time and energy to go to the rink and also spend as much time with Phichit as he possibly can.

Because Phichit—Phichit is leaving as well. Worlds is coming up and if Yuuri had made his decision earlier he could have gone to Tokyo along with him and Celestino. But as it is, Phichit is leaving and Yuuri has another couple of days to spend alone in the quiet, empty apartment before his flight.

His layover in Tokyo isn’t even long enough to see him again. They are going to have to say goodbye before Phichit leaves.

 

Their last night together they try their best not to talk about it, for a while.

They cook together one last time, shoulders brushing in the small kitchen, working in quiet unison the way they learned to do in the last few years.

In the interest of not sabotaging Phichit’s performance at Worlds, they stick to the approved diet, but still it’s comfortable and familiar when they lounge on the couch eating, even if they have to forego the pint of ice cream this time.

They watch _The King and the Skater_ because it’s pre-competition, and Yuuri indulges Phichit by not punching him in the shoulder every time he speaks the dialogue along with the characters.

After the movie they lie there for a long time, on opposite ends of the couch, their legs tangled together, silently, each lost in their own thoughts.

They’re both thinking of the same thing, Yuuri knows, but he doesn’t want to be the one to make it real by saying it out loud.

Apparently, neither does Phichit, but eventually he does prod Yuuri’s side with his foot, making him look up.

"I’m going to miss you so much, you know?“, Phichit says, and suddenly there seem to be hot coals sitting at the bottom of Yuuri’s throat, fiery and burning and choking him.

He wants to gasp for air, he wants to say something, anything, but instead he draws his legs up under him so he can crawl closer to Phichit, and reaches out with both his hands.

Phichit grasps them in his and they both squeeze, holding onto each other like the only lifeline to a distant shore and Yuuri pitches his body forward in something reminiscent of a bow and rests his forehead on Phichit’s knees.

They rest like that for a long minute, and Yuuri can’t see the expression on Phichit’s face, but he feels the warm, desperate grasp of his fingers and he hears the hitch in his breath, and when Yuuri’s own shoulders begin to shake under the force of his sobs, he feels Phichit pulling himself forward by Yuuri’s hands until he can disentangle their fingers and wrap his arms around Yuuri.

It’s a supremely uncomfortable position, but they still remain like that as long as they can, until they run the risk of compromising Phichit’s performance after all by messing up his back.

Only then do they move, and only as much as they need so they can wrap themselves around each other properly. They cling and they cling and they cling and no more words pass between them—no more words are needed, no more words can possibly give meaning to what they are both feeling right then.

There will be more words in the morning, when Phichit is actually leaving, more trivial words, the _stay in touch_ and the _take care of yourself_ and the _let me know when you land_ , but for now there is only silence.

There are blankets still wrapped around them and pillows piled high and Phichit’s skin and clothes are warm and supple against him, but Yuuri feels cold all over.

He’s going to have to go home.

He wanted this—he wants this.

But he’s going to have to go home, where there is no Phichit, no one to cling to in the nights when everything gets too heavy.

There’s going to be his parents and Mari and Minako-sensei, there’s still going to be someone greeting him with a soft _okaeri_ when he comes home.

But he’s going back to Japan where skinship is something reserved for children and couples. He’s going back to a home that is by no means empty and a family that is by no means cold, but Phichit is not going to be right there in the next room, his door always open, and there’s not going to be a ball of fur, softly breathing, in his bed at night.

 

He’s going back to a home without Vicchan.

He’s going back to a home that is painfully empty of his warm, friendly, furry presence, and he’s doing it without his best friend.

 

Eventually they do need to separate, for a short while at least, as they change and get ready for bed. By unspoken agreement they find each other again at the edge of Yuuri’s bed, both in their pyjamas now.

They climb under the covers in silence, arms wrapped around each other once more and legs tangled together, and the only words that pass between them are the quiet good nights whispered into the darkness.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri is very careful about extracting himself from Phichit’s embrace hours later, still awake.

For a long while he was content to see and feel Phichit breathing next to him, contemplating all the good things that he had been given by having Phichit in his life, and the small amount of solace he hoped he was able to give back to him now.

But eventually, as the hours dragged on and sleep continued to evade him, his body began to ache with restlessness, as did his head with all the thoughts crammed into it.

So he slips out from Phichit’s arms, gently, taking care to tuck the blanket back around him closely, and in the pale yellowish light trickling in through the windows from the street lights outside he grabs his phone and his headphones and he slips out of his room.

 

The living room is dark, and cold after the warmth of the shared bed.

He slips the headphones over his ears and flicks through his phone.

He begins with _Delilah_ , as he often does, relying on her to show him how to dance all over again.

The movements feel familiar and natural, nowhere close to the strangeness of his first time back on the ice. The music flows through him like molten gold and it feels right.

_‘Cause I’m gonna be free and I’m gonna be fine._

He wraps the words around him like a cloak, lets them clad him in certainty, and he _moves_.

He’s sure his form is terrible after all these weeks without practice, but it doesn’t matter in the least.

He moves.

After this song comes another and another and another and all of them are perfect and he doesn’t stop until he’s panting and sweating in his flannel pyjamas.

He slumps against the arm rest of the couch, catching his breath and there’s a tingling in his blood that makes something bubble up at the back of his brain.

_You make a fool of death with your beauty and for a moment I forget to worry._

His fingers are almost shaking in his haste to pick up his phone and then the first soft, dreamy notes of _Hunger_ are in his ears and he’s standing again, moving again like it’s tearing something in him open.

He feels weightless and there isn’t a single thought on his mind.

 

If he’s pretending he doesn’t see Phichit lingering in the doorway to the living room, half hidden in shadows, watching him, sleep-mussed and with a soft gaze, then Phichit is pretending not to notice him climbing back into bed later, crawling under the covers, sweaty and heart still pounding.

 

Phichit’s arms are waiting for him, open, like an afterthought, and Yuuri slips between them, easy, like there’s nowhere else for him to be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are. It's done. It's over.
> 
> [[Delilah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ50rvySDCk) | [Hunger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GHXEGz3PJg)]
> 
>  
> 
> I hope y'all will excuse me for gushing for a little bit:  
> Thank you so much for everyone who joined me on this journey, to everyone who read and left kudos and kept coming back for more. Thank you particularly to every single person who every left a comment on this fic, it’s been a delight and I seriously couldn’t have done this without you! 🖤🖤🖤
> 
> Here’s a couple of notes to finish up with:  
> \- I realised in all these months I never actually drew anything for T&D, which is so unlike me! So if you, like me, had a hard time picturing Phichit and Yuuri's uncomfortable embrace on the couch, [I made art for it](https://nihideadraws.tumblr.com/post/186612560788/) because as y'all know I like tearing out my own heart and all y'all's with it :) :) :)  
> \- I’m sorry about the not canon-compliant details in this last chapter. I know Yuuri technically goes to a school in Japan and probably would have gone back there for his graduation before returning to Hasetsu. However, having set it up over the whole fic that he goes to school in Detroit, it made more sense to me to stick with that. I think canonically there's a good chance he flew to Tokyo with Phichit and Ciao-Ciao, took care of his uni business and returned to Hasetsu in time for the men's free skate. But who actually knows?  
> \- That being said, I have no idea about the American school system so I apologise if I got anything wrong or there’s anything that isn’t realistic about it. In case you’re wondering, I’ve never really settled on what Yuuri’s actual degree is. I’ve seen a few options in different fics that I really liked but I never really wanted to settle on one. The only thing I really hc is that he’s got a minor in Dance.  
> \- For everyone who was hoping to see more of Victor before this fic ends: I apologise, but don’t lose hope! I couldn’t find a way to incorporate Victor’s POV again without disrupting the flow of the fic, but I’m not quite done with him, either. So there’s a good chance that there will be a short follow up fic or a couple of one-shots with Victor’s perspective on the time that we spent with Yuuri in Detroit. If you’re interested, make sure to subscribe to me or check back every once in a while.  
> \- Phichit ended up playing a much bigger role in this story than I anticipated, but I refuse to apologise for that because I love Phichit, and I love his friendship with Yuuri with all my heart and I could write a whole other 40K just about the two of them.
> 
> I hope everyone can be satisfied with how I ended this story—I think it’s plenty hopeful without sugarcoating anything. Yuuri still has a long way before him, but we get to witness much of that in canon, so I’m not sure how much I could actually contribute to that. Thank you once more for everyone’s support and encouragement and patience. It’s been a true privilege. I have many more things planned for the next months, and it would be my pleasure to see some of you joining me again! 🖤
> 
> And now I’m going to shut up.
> 
> Chapter title from [Shake It Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbN0nX61rIs) by Florence + the Machine:  
>  _'Cause I am done with my graceless heart,_  
>  _So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart._  
>  _'Cause I like to keep my issues strong._  
>  _It's always darkest before the dawn._  
>  _Shake it out, shake it out,_  
>  _Shake it out, shake it out._  
>  _And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back_  
>  _So shake him off._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I appreciate any and all feedback and I hope to see you again next week! 🖤
> 
>  
> 
> Come yell at me on [the tumblr](http://theliteraryluggage.tumblr.com), if you like.


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